LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  CRUZ 


C/2W 


P5 


ESSAYS 


FROM   THE 


NORTH  AMERICAN 
REVIEW. 


EDITED    BY 

ALLEN    THORNDIKE    RICE. 

•>   //' 


NEW     YORK: 

D.     APPLETON     ANDCOMPANY 

549    AND    551    BROADWAY. 

1879. 


COPYRIGHT   BY 

D.  APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

1879. 


PREFACE. 


THE  Essays  collected  in  this  volume  may,  without 
pretension,  be  truly  said  to  represent  the  growth  of 
native  thought  and  scholarship  in  the  United  States 
from  the  close  of  the  second  war  with  Great  Britain 
down  to  the  close  of  the  great  Civil  War.  In  few 
libraries,  public  or  private,  can  complete  sets  of  the 
"  North  American  Review "  be  found,  and  the  best 
thoughts  and  the  freshest  activity  of  two  generations 
of  conspicuous  American  writers  have  thus  remained 
inaccessible  to  the  great  mass  of  the  American  reading 
public. 

When  the  "  North  American  Review "  was  pro- 
jected, the  object  of  its  founders  was  to  give  public 
voice  to  a  group  of  students,  scholars,  and  thinkers  in 
and  around  the  university  at  Cambridge  and  the  capi- 
tal of  Massachusetts,  then  not  unaptly  called  the  Athens 
of  the  New  World  ;  and  the  form  of  the  "  Review  "  was 
suggested  by  the  amazing  success  which  had  attended 
the  experiment  so  boldly  ventured  upon  but  a  few  years 
before  by  Jeffrey,  Brougham,  Horner,  Sydney  Smith, 


iv  PREFACE. 

and  their  associates  at  Edinburgh.  The  new  periodical 
instantly  drew  to  itself  as  contributors  a  concourse  of 
rising  American  scholars,  statesmen,  poets,  and  jurists, 
whose  names  have  long  since  become  household  words 
in  this  country,  and  among  whom,  as  a  glance  at  these 
pages  will  show,  were  numbered  almost  all  the  men 
who  have  since  won  a  high  place  for  American  literature 
in  the  intellectual  annals  of  the  modern  world. 

It  is  to  afford  the  present  generation  of  readers  an 
easy  access  to  this  most  interesting  chapter  of  our  liter- 
ary history  that,  with  the  kind  permission  of  such  of  the 
authors  as  are  still  living,  this  volume  is  now  given  to 
the  public. 

A.  T.  R. 
NEW  YORK,  June, 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Sir  Walter  Scott    (APRIL,  1838)       ...         .         .         3 
WILLIAM  HICKLING  PRESCOTT. 

The  Social  Condition  of  Woman    (APRIL,  1836)         .       64 
CALEB  GUSHING. 

John  Milton    QULY,  1838) 99 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 

The  Last  Moments  of  Eminent  Men    (JANUARY,  1834)     123 
GEORGE  BANCROFT. 

Peter  the  Great    (OCTOBER.  1845)      .          .          .          .146 
JOHN  LOTHROP  MOTLEY. 

The  Northmen    (OCTOBER,  1832)        .          .          .          .215 
WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

The  Earl  of  Chesterfield    (JULY,  1846)      .         .         .255 
CHARLES  FRANCIS  ADAMS. 

Defense  of  Poetry    (JULY,  1832)         ....     303 
HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


vi  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne    (OCTOBER,  1864)    .         .         .334 
GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS. 

James  Fenimore  Cooper    (JANUARY,  1852)  .          .     358 

FRANCIS  PARKMAN. 

Shakespeare  once  more    (APRIL,  1868)        .         .         -     377 
JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

The  Mechanism  of  Vital  Actions    (JULY,  1857)          .     433 
OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


WALTER  SCOTT* 


THERE  is  no  kind  of  writing  which  has  truth  and  in- 
struction for  its  main  object  so  interesting  and  popular,  on 
the  whole,  as  biography.  History,  in  its  larger  sense,  has  to 
deal  with  masses,  which,  while  they  divide  the  attention  by 
the  dazzling  variety  of  objects,  from  their  very  generality, 
are  scarcely  capable  of  touching  the  heart.  The  great  ob- 
jects on  which  it  is  employed  have  little  relation  to  the 
daily  occupations  with  which  the  reader  is  most  intimate. 
A  nation,  like  a  corporation,  seems  to  have  no  soul ;  and  its 
checkered  vicissitudes  may  be  contemplated  rather  with 
curiosity  for  the  lessons  they  convey  than  with  personal 
sympathy.  How  different  are  the  feelings  excited  by  the 
fortunes  of  an  individual — one  of  the  mighty  mass,  who  in 
the  page  of  history  is  swept  along  the  current,  unnoticed 
and  unknown  !  Instead  of  a  mere  abstraction,  at  once  we 
see  a  being  like  ourselves,  "fed  with  the  same  food,  hurt 
with  the  same  weapons,  subject  to  the  same  diseases,  healed 
by  the  same  means,  warmed  and  cooled  by  the  same  winter 
and  summer  "  as  we  are.  We  place  ourselves  in  his  posi- 

*  i.  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Bart.,  by  J.  G.  Lockhart. 
Five  vols.,  I2mo.  Boston  :  Otis,  Broaders  &  Co.  1837. 

2.  Recollections  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Bart.  i6mo.  London :  James 
Fraser.  1837. 


4  .S7/?    WALTER  SCOTT. 

tion,  and  see  the  passing  current  of  events  with  the  same 
eyes.  We  become  a  party  to  all  his  little  schemes,  share  in 
his  triumphs,  or  mourn  with  him  in  the  disappointment  of 
defeat.  His  friends  become  our  friends.  We  learn  to  take 
an  interest  in  their  characters,  from  their  relation  to  him. 
As  they  pass  away  from  the  stage,  one  after  another,  and 
as  the  clouds  of  misfortune,  perhaps,  or  of  disease,  settle 
around  the  evening  of  his  own  day,  we  feel  the  same  sad- 
ness that  steals  over  us  on  a  retrospect  of  earlier  and  hap- 
pier hours.  And,  when  at  last  we  have  followed  him  to  the 
tomb,  we  close  the  volume,  and  feel  that  we  have  turned 
over  another  chapter  in  the  history  of  life. 

On  the  same  principles,  probably,  we  are  more  moved 
by  the  exhibition  of  those  characters  whose  days  have  been 
passed  in  the  ordinary  routine  of  domestic  and  social  life, 
than  by  those  most  intimately  connected  with  the  great  pub- 
lic events  of  their  age.  WThat,  indeed,  is  the  history  of  such 
men  but  that  of  the  times  ?  The  life  of  Wellington,  or  of 
Bonaparte,  is  the  story  of  the  wars  and  revolutions  of  Eu- 
rope. But  that  of  Cowper,  gliding  away  in  the  seclusion 
of  rural  solitude,  reflects  all  those  domestic  joys,  and,  alas ! 
more  than  the  sorrows,  which  gather  round  every  man's  fire- 
side and  his  heart.  In  this  way  the  story  of  the  humblest 
individual,  faithfully  recorded,  becomes  an  object  of  lively 
interest.  How  much  is  that  interest  increased  in  the  case 
of  a  man  like  Scott,  who,  from  his  own  fireside,  has  sent 
forth  a  voice  to  cheer  and  delight  millions  of  his  fellow 
men ;  whose  life,  indeed,  passed  within  the  narrow  circle 
of  his  own  village,  as  it  were,  but  who,  nevertheless,  has 
called  up  more  shapes  and  phantasies  within  that  magic 
circle,  acted  more  extraordinary  parts,  and  afforded  more 


•S1//?    WALTER   SCOTT.  5 

marvels  for  the  imagination  to  feed  on,  than  can  be  fur- 
nished by  the  most  nimble-footed,  nimble-tongued  traveler, 
from  Marco  Polo  down  to  Mrs.  Trollope,  and  that  literary 
Sindbad,  Captain  Hall ! 

Fortunate  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  was  in  his  life,  it  is  not 
the  least  of  his  good  fortunes  that  he  left  the  task  of  record- 
ing it  to  one  so  competent  as  Mr.  Lockhart;  who,  to  a 
familiarity  with  the  person  and  habits  of  his  illustrious  sub- 
ject, unites  such  entire  sympathy  with  his  pursuits,  and  such 
fine  tact  and  discrimination  in  arranging  the  materials  for 
their  illustration.  We  have  seen  it  objected,  that  the  biog- 
rapher has  somewhat  transcended  his  lawful  limits,  in  oc- 
casionally exposing  what  a  nice  tenderness  for  the  reputa- 
tion of  Scott  should  have  led  him  to  conceal.  But,  on 
reflection,  we  are  not  inclined  to  adopt  these  views.  It  is, 
indeed,  difficult  to  prescribe  any  precise  rule  by  which  the 
biographer  should  be  guided  in  exhibiting  the  peculiarities, 
and  still  more  the  defects,  of  his  subject.  He  should, 
doubtless,  be  slow  to  draw  from  obscurity  those  matters 
which  are  of  a  strictly  personal  and  private  nature,  particu- 
larly when  they  have  no  material  bearing  on  the  character 
of  the  individual.  But  whatever  the  latter  has  done,  said, 
or  written  to  others,  can  rarely  be  made  to  come  within  this 
rule.  A  swell  of  panegyric,  where  everything  is  in  broad 
sunshine,  without  the  relief  of  a  shadow  to  contrast  it,  is  out 
of  nature,  and  must  bring  discredit  on  the  whole.  Nor  is 
it  much  better,  when  a  sort  of  twilight  mystification  is  spread 
over  a  man's  actions,  until,  as  in  the  case  of  all  biographies 
of  Cowper  previous  to  that  of  Southey,  we  are  completely 
bewildered  respecting  the  real  motives  of  conduct.  If  ever 
there  was  a  character  above  the  necessity  of  any  manage- 


6  SIR    WALTER  SCOTT. 

ment  of  this  sort,  it  was  Scott's ;  and  we  can  not  but  think 
that  the  frank  exposition  of  the  minonblemishes  which  sully 
it,  by  securing  the  confidence  of  the  reader  in  the  general 
fidelity  of  the  portraiture,  and  thus  disposing  him  to  receive, 
without  distrust,  those  favorable  statements  in  his  history 
which  might  seem  incredible,  as  they  certainly  are  unpre- 
cedented, is,  on  the  whole,  advantageous  to  his  reputation. 
As  regards  the  moral  effect  on  the  reader,  we  may  apply 
Scott's  own  argument  for  not  always  recompensing  suffering 
virtue,  at  the  close  of  his  fictions,  with  temporal  prosperity, 
that  such  an  arrangement  would  convey  no  moral  to  the 
heart  whatever,  since  a  glance  at  the  great  picture  of  life 
would  show  that  virtue  is  not  always  thus  rewarded. 

In  regard  to  the  literary  execution  of  Mr.  Lockhart's 
work,  the  public  voice  has  long  since  pronounced  on  it.  A 
prying  criticism  may,  indeed,  discern  a  few  of  those  contra- 
band epithets,  and  slipshod  sentences,  more  excusable  in 
young  "  Peter's  Letters  to  his  Kinsfolk,"  where,  indeed,  they 
are  thickly  sown,  than  in  the  production  of  a  grave  Aris- 
tarch  of  British  criticism.  But  this  is  small  game,  where 
every  reader  of  the  least  taste  and  sensibility  must  find  so 
much  to  applaud.  It  is  enough  to  say  that,  in  passing  from 
the  letters  of  Scott,  with  which  the  work  is  besprinkled,  to 
the  text  of  the  biographer,  we  find  none  of  those  chilling 
transitions  which  occur  on  the  like  occasions  in  more  bun- 
gling productions ;  as,  for  example,  in  that  recent  one,  in 
which  the  unfortunate  Hannah  More  is  done  to  death  by 
her  friend  Roberts.  On  the  contrary,  we  are  sensible  only 
to  a  new  variety  of  beauty  in  the  style  of  composition. 
The  correspondence  is  illumined  by  all  that  is  needed  to 
make  it  intelligible  to  a  stranger,  and  selected  with  such 


5/7?    WALTER  SCOTT.  7 

discernment  as  to  produce  the  clearest  impression  of  the 
character  of  its  author.  The  mass  of  interesting  details  is 
conveyed  in  language  richly  colored  with  poetic  sentiment, 
and  at  the  same  time  without  a  tinge  of  that  mysticism 
which,  as  Scott  himself  truly  remarked,  "  will  never  do  for 
a  writer  of  fiction,  no,  nor  of  history,  nor  moral  essays,  nor 
sermons  " ;  but  which,  nevertheless,  finds  more  or  less  favor 
in  our  own  community,  at  the  present  day,  in  each  and  all 
of  these. 

The  second  work  which  we  have  placed  at  the  head  of 
this  article,  and  from  which  the  last  remark  of  Sir  Walter's 
was  borrowed,  is  a  series  of  notices  originally  published  in 
"  Fraser's  Magazine,"  but  now  collected,  with  considerable 
additions,  into  a  separate  volume.  Its  author,  Mr.  Robert 
Pierce  Gillies,  is  a  gentleman  of  the  Scotch  bar,  favorably 
known  by  translations  from  the  German.  The  work  conveys 
a  lively  report  of  several  scenes  and  events  which,  before  the 
appearance  of  Lockhart's  book,  were  of  more  interest  and 
importance  than  they  can  now  be,  lost  as  they  are  in  the 
flood  of  light  which  is  poured  on  us  from  that  source.  In 
the  absence  of  the  sixth  and  last  volume,  however,  Mr. 
Gillies  may  help  us  to  a  few  particulars  respecting  the  clos- 
ing years  of  Sir  Walter's  life,  that  may  have  some  novelty — 
we  know  not  how  much  to  be  relied  on — for  the  reader. 
In  the  present  notice  of  a  work  so  familiar  to  most  persons, 
we  shall  confine  ourselves  to  some  of  those  circumstances 
which  contributed  to  form,  or  have  an  obvious  connection 
with,  his  literary  character. 

WALTER  SCOTT  was  born  at  Edinburgh,  August  15,  1771. 
The  character  of  his  father,  a  respectable  member  of  that 
class  of  attorneys  who  in  Scotland  are  called  Writers  to  the 


8  SIX    WALTER  SCOTT. 

Signet,  is  best  conveyed  to  the  reader  by  saying  that  he  sat 
for  the  portrait  of  Mr.  Saunders  Fairford,  in  "  Redgauntlet." 
His  mother  was  a  woman  of  taste  and  imagination,  and  had 
an  obvious  influence  in  guiding  those  of  her  son.  His  an- 
cestors, by  both  father's  and  mother's  side,  were  of  "  gentle 
blood  " — a  position  which,  placed  between  the  highest  and 
the  lower  ranks  in  society,  was  extremely  favorable,  as  af- 
fording facilities  for  communication  with  both.  A  lameness 
in  his  infancy — a  most  fortunate  lameness  for  the  world,  if, 
as  Scott  says,  it  spoiled  a  soldier — and  a  delicate  constitu- 
tion made  it  expedient  to  try  the  efficacy  of  country  air 
and  diet ;  and  he  was  placed  under  the  roof  of  his  paternal 
grandfather  at  Sandy-Knowe,  a  few  miles  distant  from  the 
capital.  Here  his  days  were  passed  in  the  open  fields, 
"  with  no  other  fellowship,"  as  he  says,  "  than  that  of  the 
sheep  and  lambs  " ;  and  here,  in  the  lap  of  Nature — 

"  Meet  nurse  for  a  poetic  child," 

his  infant  vision  was  greeted  with  those  rude,  romantic 
scenes  which  his  own  verses  have  since  hallowed  for  the 
pilgrims  from  every  clime.  In  the  long  evenings,  his  im- 
agination, as  he  grew  older,  was  warmed  by  traditionary 
legends  of  border  heroism  and  adventure,  repeated  by  the 
aged  relative  who  had  herself  witnessed  the  last  gleams  of 
border  chivalry.  His  memory  was  one  of  the  first  powers 
of  his  mind  which  exhibited  an  extraordinary  development. 
One  of  the  longest  of  these  old  ballads,  in  particular,  stuck 
so  close  to  it,  and  he  repeated  it  with  such  stentorian  vocif- 
eration, as  to  draw  from  the  minister  of  a  neighboring  kirk 
the  testy  exclamation,  "  One  may  as  well  speak  in  the  mouth 
of  a  cannon  as  where  that  child  is." 


WALTER  SCOTT.  9 

On  his  removal  to  Edinburgh,  in  his  eighth  year,  he  was 
subjected  to  different  influences.  His  worthy  father  was  a 
.  severe  martinet  in  all  the  forms  of  his  profession,  and  it  may 
be  added,  indeed,  of  his  religion,  which  he  contrived  to 
make  somewhat  burdensome  to  his  more  volatile  son.  The 
tutor  was  still  more  strict  in  his  religious  sentiments,  and 
the  lightest  literary  divertissement  in  which  either  of  them 
indulged  was  such  as  could  be  gleaned  from  the  time-hon- 
ored folios  of  Archbishop  Spottiswoode,  or  worthy  Robert 
Wodrow.  Even  here,  however,  Scott's  young  mind  con- 
trived to  gather  materials  and  impulses  for  future  action. 
In  his  long  arguments  with  Master  Mitchell,  he  became 
steeped  in  the  history  of  the  Covenanters,  and  the  perse- 
cuted Church  of  Scotland,  while  he  was  still  more  rooted 
in  his  own  Jacobite  notions,  early  instilled  into  his  mind  by 
the  tales  of  his  relatives  of  Sandy-Knowe,  whose  own  family 
had  been  out  in  the  "affair  of  forty-five."  Amid  the  pro- 
fessional and  polemical  worthies  of  his  father's  library,  Scott 
detected  a  copy  of  Shakespeare ;  and  he  relates  with  what 
gotit  he  used  to  creep  out  of  his  bed,  where  he  had  been 
safely  deposited  for  the  night,  and,  by  the  light  of  the  fire, 
in  puris  naturalibus,  as  it  were,  pore  over  the  pages  of  the 
great  magician,  and  study  those  mighty  spells  by  which  he 
gave  to  airy  phantasies  the  forms  and  substance  of  humanity. 
Scott  distinctly  recollected  the  time  and  the  spot  where  he 
first  opened  a  volume  of  Percy's  "  Reliques  of  English  Po- 
etry "  ;  a  work  which  may  have  suggested  to  him  the  plan 
and  the  purpose  of  the  "  Border  Minstrelsy."  Every  day's 
experience  shows  us  how  much  more  actively  the  business 
of  education  goes  on  out  of  school  than  in  it.  And  Scott's 
history  shows  equally  that  genius,  whatever  obstacles  may 


I0  .577?    WALTER  SCOTT. 

be  thrown  in  its  way  in  one  direction,  will  find  room  for  its 
expansion  in  another;  as  the  young  tree  sends  forth  its 
shoots  most  prolific  in  that  quarter  where  the  sunshine  is 
permitted  to  fall  on  it. 

At  the  High  School,  in  which  he  was  placed  by  his  fa- 
ther at  an  early  period,  he  seems  not  to  have  been  particu- 
larly distinguished  in  the  regular  course  of  studies.  His 
voracious  appetite  for  books,  however,  of  a  certain  cast, 
as  romances,  chivalrous  tales,  and  worm-eaten  chronicles 
scarcely  less  chivalrous,  and  his  wonderful  memory  for  such 
reading  as  struck  his  fancy,  soon  made  him  regarded  by  his 
fellows  as  a  phenomenon  of  black-letter  scholarship,  which 
in  process  of  time  achieved  for  him  the  cognomen  of  that 
redoubtable  schoolman,  Duns  Scotus.  He  now  also  gave 
evidence  of  his  powers  of  creation  as  well  as  of  acquisition. 
He  became  noted  for  his  own  stories,  generally  bordering 
on  the  marvelous,  with  a  plentiful  seasoning  of  knight- 
errantry,  which  suited  his  bold  and  chivalrous  temper. 
"Slink  over  beside  me,  Jamie,"  he  would  whisper  to  his 
schoolfellow  Ballantyne,  "  and  I'll  tell  you  a  story."  Jamie 
was,  indeed,  destined  to  sit  beside  him  during  the  greater 
part  of  his  life. 

The  same  tastes  and  talents  continued  to  display  them- 
selves more  strongly  with  increasing  years.  Having  beaten 
pretty  thoroughly  the  ground  of  romantic  and  legendary  lore, 
at  least  so  far  as  the  English  libraries  to  which  he  had  access 
would  permit,  he  next  endeavored,  while  at  the  University, 
to  which  he  had  been  transferred  from  the  High  School, 
to  pursue  the  same  subject  in  the  Continental  languages. 
Many  were  the  strolls  which  he  took  in  the  neighborhood, 
especially  to  Arthur's  Seat  and  Salisbury  Crags,  where, 


WALTER  SCOTT.  IZ 

perched  on  some  almost  inaccessible  eyrie,  he  might  be  seen 
conning  over  his  Ariosto  or  Cervantes,  or  some  other  bard 
of  romance,  with  some  favorite  companion  of  his  studies,  or 
pouring  into  the  ears  of  the  latter  his  own  boyish  legends, 
glowing  with 

"  .  .  .  .  achievements  high, 
And  circumstance  of  chivalry." 

A  critical  knowledge  of  these  languages  he  seems  not  to 
have  obtained ;  and,  even  in  the  French,  made  but  an  indif- 
ferent figure  in  conversation.  An  accurate  acquaintance 
with  the  pronunciation  and  prosody  of  a  foreign  tongue  is 
undoubtedly  a  desirable  accomplishment.  But  it  is,  after  all, 
a  mere  accomplishment,  subordinate  to  the  great  purposes 
for  which  a  language  is  to  be  learned.  Scott  did  not,  as  is 
too  often  the  case,  mistake  the  shell  for  the  kernel.  He 
looked  on  language  only  as  the  key  to  unlock  the  foreign 
stores  of  wisdom,  the  pearls  of  inestimable  price,  wherever 
found,  with  which  to  enrich  his  native  literature. 

After  a  brief  residence  at  the  University,  he  was  regu- 
larly indented  as  an  apprentice  to  his.  father,  in  1786.  One 
can  hardly  imagine  a  situation  less  congenial  with  the 
ardent,  effervescing  spirit  of  a  poetic  fancy ;  fettered  down 
to  a  daily  routine  of  drudgery,  scarcely  above  that  of  a  mere 
scrivener.  It  proved  a  useful  school  of  discipline  to  him, 
however.  It  formed  early  habits  of  method,  punctuality, 
and  laborious  industry ;  business  habits,  in  short,  most  ad- 
verse to  the  poetic  temperament,  but  indispensable  to  the 
accomplishment  of  the  gigantic  tasks  which  he  afterward 
assumed.  He  has  himself  borne  testimony  to  his  general 
diligence  in  his  new  vocation,  and  tells  us  that  on  one  occa- 


12  SIR    WALTER  SCOTT. 

sion  he  transcribed  no  less  than  a  hundred  and  twenty  folio 
pages  at  a  sitting. 

In  the  midst  of  these  mechanical  duties,  however,  he  did 
not  lose  sight  of  the  favorite  objects  of  his  study  and  medi- 
tation. He  made  frequent  excursions  into  the  Lowland  as 
well  as  Highland  districts,  in  search  of  traditionary  relics. 
These  pilgrimages  he  frequently  performed  on  foot.  His 
constitution,  now  become  hardy  by  severe  training,  made 
him  careless  of  exposure,  and  his  frank  and  warm-hearted 
manners — eminently  favorable  to  his  purposes,  by  thawing 
at  once  any  feelings  of  frosty  reserve,  which  might  have  en- 
countered a  stranger — made  him  equally  welcome  at  the 
staid  and  decorous  manse,  and  at  the  rough  but  hospitable 
board  of  the  peasant.  Here  was  indeed  the  study  of  the 
future  novelist ;  the  very  school  in  which  to  meditate  those 
models  of  character  and  situation  which  he  was  afterward, 
long  afterward,  to  transfer,  in  such  living  colors,  to  the  can- 
vas. "He  was  makin'  himsell  a'  the  time,"  says  one  of  his 
companions,  "  but  he  didna  ken,  maybe,  what  he  was  about, 
till  years  had  past.  At  first  he  thought  o'  little,  I  dare  say, 
but  the  queerness  and  the  fun."  The  honest  Writer  to  the 
Signet  does  not  seem  to  have  thought  it  either  so  funny  or 
so  profitable ;  for  on  his  son's  return  from  one  of  these  raids, 
as  he  styled  them,  the  old  gentleman  peevishly  inquired  how 
he  had  been  living,  so  long.  "  Pretty  much  like  the  young 
ravens,"  answered  Walter;  "I  only  wished  I  had  been  as 
good  a  player  on  the  flute  as  poor  George  Primrose  in  '  The 
Vicar  of  Wakefield.'  If  I  had  his  art,  I  should  like  no- 
thing better  than  to  tramp  like  him  from  cottage  to  cottage 
over  the  world."  "  I  doubt,"  said  the  grave  Clerk  to  the 
Signet,  "  I  greatly  doubt,  sir,  you  were  born  for  nae  better 


SIR    WALTER  SCOTT.  13 

than  a  gangrel  scrapegut!"  Perhaps  even  the  revelation, 
could  it  have  been  made  to  him,  of  his  son's  future  literary 
glory,  would  scarcely  have  satisfied  the  worthy  father,  who, 
probably,  would  have  regarded  a  seat  on  the  bench  of  the 
Court  of  Sessions  as  much  higher  glory.  At  all  events,  this 
was  not  far  from  the  judgment  of  Dominie  Mitchell,  who,  in 
his  notice  of  his  illustrious  pupil,  "  sincerely  regrets  that  Sir 
Walter's  precious  time  was  so  much  devoted  to  the  dulce 
rather  than  the  utile  of  composition,  and  that  his  great  tal- 
ents should  have  been  wasted  on  such  subjects  "  ! 

It  is  impossible  to  glance  at  Scott's  early  life  without 
perceiving  how  powerfully  all  its  circumstances,  whether 
accidental  or  contrived,  conspired  to  train  him  for  the  pecu- 
liar position  he  was  destined  to  occupy  in  the  world  of  let- 
ters. There  never  was  a  character  in  whose  infant  germ, 
as  it  were,  the  mature  and  fully  developed  lineaments  might 
be  more  distinctly  traced.  What  he  was  in  his  riper  age,  so 
he  was  in  his  boyhood.  We  discern  the  same  tastes,  the 
same  peculiar  talents,  the  same  social  temper  and  affections, 
and,  in  a  great  degree,  the  same  habits — in  their  embryo 
state,  of  course,  but  distinctly  marked — and  his  biographer 
has  shown  no  little  skill  in  enabling  us  to  trace  their  gradual, 
progressive  expansion,  from  the  hour  of  his  birth  up  to  the 
full  prime  and  maturity  of  manhood. 

In  1792,  Scott,  whose  original  destination  of  a  Writer 
had  been  changed  to  that  of  an  Advocate — from  his  father's 
conviction,  as  it  would  seem,  of  the  superiority  of  his  talents 
to  the  former  station — was  admitted  to  the  Scottish  bar. 
Here  he  continued  in  assiduous  attendance  during  the  regu- 
lar terms,  but  more  noted  for  his  stories  in  the  Outer  House, 
than  his  arguments  in  court.  It  may  appear  singular  that 


WALTER   SCOTT. 


a  person  so  gifted,  both  as  a  writer  and  as  a  raconteur, 
should  have  had  no  greater  success  in  his  profession.  But 
the  case  is  not  uncommon.  Indeed,  experience  shows  that 
the  most  eminent  writers  have  not  made  the  most  successful 
speakers.  It  is  not  more  strange  than  that  a  good  writer 
of  novels  should  not  excel  as  a  dramatic  author.  Perhaps 
a  consideration  of  the  subject  would  lead  us  to  refer  the 
phenomena  in  both  cases  to  the  same  principle.  At  all 
events,  Scott  was  an  exemplification  of  both ;  and  we  leave 
the  solution  to  those  who  have  more  leisure  and  ingenuity 
to  unravel  the  mystery. 

Scott's  leisure,  in  the  mean  time,  was  well  employed  in 
storing  his  mind  with  German  romance,  with  whose  wild 
fictions,  intrenching  on  the  grotesque,  indeed,  he  found  at 
that  time  more  sympathy  than  in  later  life.  In  1796  he  first 
appeared  before  the  public  as  a  translator  of  Burger's  well- 
known  ballads,  thrown  off  by  him  at  a  heat,  and  which  found 
favor  with  the  few  into  whose  hands  they  passed.  He  sub- 
sequently adventured  in  Monk  Lewis's  crazy  bark — "  Tales 
of  Wonder" — which  soon  went  to  pieces,  leaving,  however, 
among  its  surviving  fragments  the  scattered  contributions 
of  Scott. 

At  last,  in  1802,  he  gave  to  the  world  his  first  two  vol- 
umes of  the  u  Border  Minstrelsy,"  printed  by  his  old  school- 
fellow, Ballantyne,  and  which,  by  the  beauty  of  the  typogra- 
phy, as  well  as  literary  execution,  made  a  sort  of  epoch  in 
Scottish  literary  history.  There  was  no  work  of  Scott's 
after-life  which  showed  the  result  of  so  much  preliminary 
labor.  Before  ten  years  old,  he  had  collected  several  vol- 
umes of  ballads  and  traditions,  and  we  have  seen  how  dili- 
gently he  pursued  the  same  vocation  in  later  years.  The 


WALTER   SCOTT. 


publication  was  admitted  to  be  far  more  faithful,  as  well  as 
more  skillfully  collated,  than  its  prototype,  the  "  Reliques  "  of 
Bishop  Percy ;  while  his  notes  contained  a  mass  of  antiqua- 
rian information  relative  to  border  life,  conveyed  in  a  style 
of  beauty  unprecedented  in  topics  of  this  kind,  and  enliv- 
ened with  a  higher  interest  than  poetic  fiction.  Percy's 
"  Reliques  "  had  prepared  the  way  for  the  kind  reception  of 
the  "  Minstrelsy,"  by  the  general  relish — notwithstanding 
Dr.  Johnson's  protest — it  had  created  for  the  simple  pictures 
of  a  pastoral  and  heroic  time.  Burns  had  since  familiarized 
the  English  ear  with  the  Doric  melodies  of  his  native  land ; 
and  now  a  greater  than  Burns  appeared,  whose  first  produc- 
tion, by  a  singular  chance,  came  into  the  world  in  the  very 
year  in  which  the  Ayrshire  minstrel  was  withdrawn  from  it, 
as  if  Nature  had  intended  that  the  chain  of  poetic  inspira- 
tion should  not  be  broken.  The  delight  of  the  public  was 
further  augmented  on  the  appearance  of  the  third  volume 
of  the  "  Minstrelsy,"  containing  various  imitations  of  the  old 
ballad,  which  displayed  all  the  rich  fashion  of  the  antique, 
purified  from  the  mold  and  rust  by  which  the  beauties  of 
such  weather-beaten  trophies  are  defaced. 

The  first  edition  of  the  "  Minstrelsy,"  consisting  of  eight 
hundred  copies,  went  off,  as  Lockhart  tells  us,  in  less  than 
a  year;  and  the  poet,  on  the  publication  of  a  second,  re- 
ceived five  hundred  pounds  sterling  from  Longman — an 
enormous  price  for  such  a  commodity,  but  the  best  bargain, 
probably,  that  the  bookseller  ever  made,  as  the  subsequent 
sale  has  since  extended  to  twenty  thousand  copies. 

Scott  was  not  in  great  haste  to  follow  up  his  success.  It 
was  three  years  later  before  he  took  the  field  as  an  inde- 
pendent author,  in  a  poem  which  at  once  placed  him  among 


!6  SIR    WALTER  SCOTT. 

the  great  original  writers  of  his  country.  The  "  Lay  of  the 
Last  Minstrel,"  a  complete  expansion  of  the  ancient  ballad 
into  an  epic  form,  was  published  in  1805.  It  was  opening  a 
new  creation  in  the  realm  of  fancy.  It  seemed  as  if  the 
author  had  transfused  into  his  page  the  strong  delineations 
of  the  Homeric  pencil,  the  rude  but  generous  gallantry  of  a 
primitive  period,  softened  by  the  more  airy  and  magical  in- 
ventions of  Italian  romance,*  and  conveyed  in  tones  of 
natural  melody  such  as  had  not  been  heard  since  the  strains 
of  Burns.  The  book  speedily  found  that  unprecedented 
circulation  which  all  his  subsequent  compositions  attained. 
Other  writers  had  addressed  themselves  to  a  more  peculiar 
and  limited  feeling — to  a  narrower  and  generally  a  more 
select  audience.  But  Scott  was  found  to  combine  all  the 
qualities  of  interest  for  every  order.  He  drew  from  the 
pure  springs  which  gush  forth  in  every  heart.  His  narra- 
tive chained  every  reader's  attention  'by  the  stirring  variety 
of  its  incidents,  while  the  fine  touches  of  sentiment  with 
which  it  abounded,  like  wild  flowers,  springing  up  spontane- 
ously around,  were  full  of  freshness  and  beauty,  that  made 
one  wonder  that  others  should  not  have  stooped  to  gather 
them  before. 

The  success  of  the  "  Lay  "  determined  the  course  of  its 
author's  future  life.     Notwithstanding  his  punctual  attention 

*  "  Mettendo  lo  Turpin,  lo  metto  anch*  io," 
says  Ariosto,  playfully,  when  he  tells  a  particularly  tough  story. 
"  I  can  not  tell  how  the  truth  may  be, 

I  say  the  tale  as  'twas  said  to  me," 

says  the  author  of  the  "  Lay,"  on  a  similar  occasion.  The  resemblance 
might  be  traced  much  further  than  mere  forms  of  expression,  *to  the 
Italian,  who,  like 

"•  -  •  '  the  Atiosto  of  the  North, 
Sung  ladye-love,  and  war,  romance,  and  knightly  worth." 


SIR    WALTER  SCOTT.  I7 

to  his  profession,  his  utmost  profits  for  any  one  year  of  the 
ten  he  had  been  in  practice  had  not  exceeded  two  hundred 
and  thirty  pounds ;  and  of  late  they  had  sensibly  declined. 
Latterly,  indeed,  he  had  coquetted  somewhat  too  openly 
with  the  Muse  for  his  professional  reputation.  Themis  has 
always  been  found  a  stern  and  jealous  mistress,  chary  of 
dispensing  her  golden  favors  to  those  who  are  seduced  into 
a  flirtation  with  her  more  volatile  sister. 

Scott,  however,  soon  found  himself  in  a  situation  that 
made  him  independent  of  her  favors.  His  income  from  the 
two  offices  to  which  he  was  promoted,  of  Sheriff  of  Selkirk 
and  Clerk  of  the  Court  of  Sessions,  was  so  ample,  combined 
with  what  fell  to  him  by  inheritance  and  marriage,  that  he 
was  left  at  liberty  freely  to  consult  his  own  tastes.  Amid 
the  seductions  of  poetry,  however,  he  never  shrunk  from  his 
burdensome  professional  duties ;  and  he  submitted  to  all 
their  drudgery  with  unflinching  constancy,  when  the  labors 
of  his  pen  made  the  emoluments  almost  beneath  considera- 
tion. He  never  relished  the  idea  of  being  divorced  from 
active  life  by  the  solitary  occupations  of  a  recluse.  And  his 
official  functions,  however  severely  they  taxed  his  time,  may 
be  said  to  have,  in  some  degree,  compensated  him  by  the 
new  scenes  of  life  which  they  were  constantly  disclosing — 
the  very  materials  of  those  fictions  on  which  his  fame  and 
his  fortune  were  to  be  built. 

Scott's  situation  was,  on  the  whole,  eminently  propitious 
to  literary  pursuits.  He  was  married,  and  passed  the  better 
portion  of  the  year  in  the  country,  where  the  quiet  pleasures 
of  his  fireside  circle  and  a  keen  relish  for  rural  sports  re- 
lieved his  mind  and  invigorated  both  health  and  spirits.  In 
early  life,  it  seems,  he  had  been  crossed  in  love ;  and,  like 

2 


!8  Sf£    WALTER  SCOTT. 

Dante  and  Byron,  to  whom  in  this  respect  he  is  often  com- 
pared, he  has  more  than  once,  according  to  his  biographer, 
shadowed  forth  in  his  verses  the  object  of  his  unfortunate 
passion.  He  does  not  appear  to  have  taken  it  so  seriously, 
however,  nor  to  have  shown  the  morbid  sensibility  in  rela- 
tion to  it  discovered  by  both  Byron  and  Dante,  the  former 
of  whom  perhaps  found  his  cara  sposa  so  much  too  cold,  as 
the  latter  certainly  did  his  too  hot,  for  his  own  tempera- 
ment, as  to  seek  relief  from  the  present  in  the  poetical  vis- 
ions of  the  past. 

Scott's  next  great  poem  was  his  "  Marmion,"  transcend- 
ing, in  the  judgment  of  many,  all  his  other  epics,  and  con- 
taining, in  the  judgment  of  all,  passages  of  poetic  fire  which 
he  never  equaled ;  but  which,  nevertheless,  was  greeted  on 
its  entrance  into  the  world  by  a  critique  in  the  leading  jour- 
nal of  the  day  of  the  most  caustic  and  unfriendly  temper. 
The  journal  was  the  "  Edinburgh,"  to  which  he  had  been 
a  frequent  contributor,  and  the  reviewer  was  his  intimate 
friend  Jeffrey.  The  unkindest  cut  in  the  article  was  the 
imputation  of  a  neglect  of  Scottish  character  and  feeling. 
"  There  is  scarcely  one  trait  of  true  Scottish  nationality  or 
patriotism  introduced  into  the  whole  poem ;  and  Mr.  Scott's 
only  expression  of  admiration  for  the  beautiful  country  to 
which  he  belongs  is  put,  if  we  rightly  remember,  into  the 
mouth  of  one  of  his  southern  favorites."  This  of  Walter 
Scott !  The  critic  had  some  misgivings,  it  would  seem,  as 
to  the  propriety  of  the  part  he  was  playing,  or  at  least  as  to 
its  effect  on  the  mind  of  his  friend,  since  he  sent  a  copy  of 
the  yet  unpublished  article  to  the  latter  on  the  day  he  was 
engaged  to  dine  with  him,  with  a  request  for  a  speedy  an- 
swer. Scott  testified  no  visible  marks  of  vexation,  although 


WALTER   SCOTT.  I9 

his  wife  was  not  so  discreet,  telling  Jeffrey  rather  bluntly 
she  hoped  Constable  would  pay  him  well  for  abusing  his 
friend.  The  gossips  of  the  day  in  Edinburgh  exaggerated 
the  story  into  her  actually  turning  the  reviewer  out  of  doors. 
He  well  deserved  it. 

The  affair,  however,  led  to  important  consequences. 
Scott  was  not  slow  after  this  in  finding  the  political  princi- 
ples of  the  "  Edinburgh  "  so  repugnant  to  his  own  (and  they 
certainly  were  as  opposite  as  the  poles)  that  he  first  dropped 
the  journal,  and  next  labored  with  unwearied  diligence  to 
organize  another,  whose  main  purpose  should  be  to  coun- 
teract the  heresies  of  the  former.  This  was  the  origin  of  the 
London  "Quarterly,"  more  imputable  to  Scott's  exertions 
than  to  those  of  any,  indeed  all,  other  persons.  The  result 
has  been,  doubtljess,  highly  serviceable  to  the  interests  of 
both  morals  and  letters.  Not  that  the  new  review  was  con- 
ducted with  more  fairness  or,  in  this  sense,  principle  than 
its  antagonist.  A  remark  of  Scott's  own,  in  a  letter,  to  Ellis, 
shows  with  how  much  principle.  "  I  have  run  up  an  at- 
tempt on  '  The  Curse  of  Kehama  '  for  the  '  Quarterly.'  It 
affords  cruel  openings  to  the  quizzers,  and  I  suppose  will 
get  it  roundly  in  the  *  Edinburgh  Review.'  I  would  have 
made  a  very  different  hand  of  it,  indeed,  had  the  order  of 
the  day  been  pour  cttchirer"  But,  although  the  fate  of  the 
individual  was  thus,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  matter  of  caprice 
or  rather  prejudgment  in  the  critic,  yet  the  great  abstract 
questions  in  morals,  politics,  and  literature,  by  being  dis- 
cussed on  both  sides,  were  presented  in  a  fuller  and  of 
course  fairer  light  to  the  public.  Another  beneficial  result 
to  letters  was — and  we  shall  gain  credit,  at  least,  for  candor 
in  confessing  it — that  it  broke  down  somewhat  of  that 


20  -S/ff    WALTER  SCOTT. 

divinity  which  hedged  in  the  despotic  we  of  the  reviewer,  so 
long  as  no  rival  arose  to  contest  the  scepter.  The  claims  to 
infallibility,  so  long  and  slavishly  acquiesced  in,  fell  to  the 
ground  when  thus  stoutly  asserted  by  conflicting  parties. 
It  was  pretty  clear  that  the  same  thing  could  not  be  all  black 
and  all  white  at  the  same  time.  In  short,  it  was  the  old 
story  of  pope  and  antipope ;  and  the  public  began  to  find 
out  that  there  might  be  hopes  for  the  salvation  of  an  author, 
though  damned  by  the  literary  popedom.  Time,  indeed,  by 
reversing  many  of  its  decisions,  must  at  length  have  shown 
the  same  thing. 

But  to  return.  Scott  showed  how  nearly  he  had  been 
touched  to  the  quick  by  two  other  acts  not  so  discreet. 
These  were  the  establishment  of  an  Annual  Register,  and 
of  the  great  publishing  house  of  the  Ballantynes,  in  which 
he  became  a  silent  partner.  The  last  step  involved  him  in 
grievous  embarrassments,  and  stimulated  him  to  exertions 
which  required  "  a  frame  of  adamant  and  soul  of  fire  "  to 
have  endured.  At  the  same  time,  we  find  him  overwhelmed 
with  poetical,  biographical,  historical,  and  critical  composi- 
tions, together  with  editorial  labors  of  appalling  magnitude. 
In  this  multiplication  of  himself  in  a  thousand  forms,  we  see 
him  always  the  same,  vigorous  and  effective.  "  Poetry,"  he 
says,  in  one  of  his  letters,  "  is  a  scourging  crop,  and  ought 
not  to  be  hastily  repeated.  Editing,  therefore,  may  be  con- 
sidered as  a  green  crop  of  turnips  or  peas,  extremely  useful 
to  those  whose  circumstances  do  not  admit  of  giving  their 
farm  a  summer  fallow."  It  might  be  regretted,  however, 
that  he  should  have  wasted  powers  fitted  for  so  much  higher 
culture  on  the  coarse  products  of  a  kitchen-garden,  which 
might  have  been  safely  trusted  to  inferior  hands. 


SIR    WALTER  SCOTT.  21 

In  1811  Scott  gave  to  the  world  his  exquisite  poem, 
"  The  Lady  of  the  Lake."  One  of  his  fair  friends  had  re- 
monstrated with  him  on  thus  risking  again  the  laurel  he  had 
already  won.  He  replied,  with  characteristic  and  indeed 
prophetic  spirit :  "  If  I  fail,  /  will  write  prose  all  my  life. 
But  if  I  succeed — 

'  Up  wi'  the  bonnie  blue  bonnet, 
The  dirk  and  the  feather  an  a' ! '" 

In  his  eulogy  on  Byron,  Scott  remarks :  "  There  has  been 
no  reposing  under  the  shade  of  his  laurels,  no  living  upon 
the  resource  of  past  reputation ;  none  of  that  coddling  and 
petty  precaution  which  little  authors  call  'taking  care  of 
their  fame.'  Byron  let  his  fame  take  care  of  itself."  Scott 
could  not  have  more  accurately  described  his  own  char- 
acter. 

"  The  Lady  of  the  Lake  "  was  welcomed  with  an  enthu- 
siasm surpassing  that  which  attended  any  other  of  his 
poems.  It  seemed  like  the  sweet  breathings  of  his  native 
pibroch,  stealing  over  glen  and  mountain,  and  calling  up  all 
the  delicious  associations  of  rural  solitude,  which  beautifully 
contrasted  with  the  din  of  battle  and  the  shrill  cry  of  the 
war-trumpet  that  stirred  the  soul  in  every  page  of  his 
"  Marmion."  The  publication  of  this  work  carried  his  fame 
as  a  poet  to  its  most  brilliant  height.  Its  popularity  may 
be  inferred  from  the  fact  stated  by  Lockhart,  that  the  post- 
horse  duty  rose  to  an  extraordinary  degree  in  Scotland, 
from  the  eagerness  of  travelers  to  visit  the  localities  of  the 
poem.  A  more  substantial  evidence  was  afforded  in  its 
amazing  circulation,  and  consequently  its  profits.  The 
press  could  scarcely  keep  pace  with  the  public  demand, 


22  SIX    WALTER  SCOTT. 

and  no  less  than  fifty  thousand  copies  of  it  have  been  sold 
since  the  date  of  its  appearance.  The  successful  author 
realized  more  than  two  thousand  guineas  from  his  produc- 
tion. Milton  received  ten  pounds  for  the  two  editions 
which  he  lived  to  see  of  his  "Paradise  Lost."  The  Ayr- 
shire bard  had  sighed  for  "  a  lass  wi'  a  tocher."  Scott  had 
now  found  one  in  the  Muse,  such  as  no  Scottish  nor  any 
other  poet  had  ever  found  before. 

While  the  poetical  fame  of  Scott  was  thus  at  its  zenith,  a 
new  star  rose  above  the  horizon,  whose  eccentric  course  and 
dazzling  radiance  completely  bewildered  the  spectator.  In 
1812  "Childe  Harold"  appeared,  and  the  attention  seemed 
to  be  now  called,  for  the  first  time,  from  the  outward  form 
of  man  and  visible  nature  to  the  secret  depths  of  the  soul. 
The  darkest  recesses  of  human  passion  were  laid  open,  and 
the  note  of  sorrow  was  prolonged  in  tones  of  agonized  sen- 
sibility, the  more  touching  as  coming  from  one  who  was 
placed  on  those  dazzling  heights  of  rank  and  fashion  which, 
to  the  vulgar  eye  at  least,  seem  to  lie  in  unclouded  sunshine. 
Those  of  the  present  generation  who  have  heard  only  the 
same  key  thrummed  ad  nauseam  by  the  feeble  imitators  of 
his  lordship,  can  form  no  idea  of  the  effect  produced  when 
the  chords  were  first  swept  by  the  master's  fingers.  It  was 
found  impossible  for  the  ear  once  attuned  to  strains  of  such 
compass  and  ravishing  harmony,  to  return  with  the  same 
relish  to  purer,  it  might  be,  but  tamer  melody;  and  the 
sweet  voice  of  the  Scottish  minstrel  lost  much  of  its  power 
to  charm,  let  him  charm  never  so  wisely.  While  "  Rokeby  " 
was  in  preparation,  bets  were  laid  on  the  rival  candidates 
by  the  wits  of  the  day.  The  sale  of  this  poem,  though  great, 
showed  a  sensible  decline  in  the  popularity  of  its  author. 


SIX    WALTER  SCOTT.  23 

This  became  still  more  evident  on  the  publication  of  "  The 
Lord  of  the  Isles  " ;  and  Scott  admitted  the  conviction  with 
his  characteristic  spirit  and  good  nature.  "'  Well,  James,' 
he  said  to  his  printer,  '  I  have  given  you  a  week ;  what  are 
people  saying  about  "  The  Lord  of  the  Isles  "  ?  '  I  hesitated 
a  little,  after  the  fashion  of  Gil  Bias,  but  he  speedily  brought 
the  matter  to  a  point.  'Come,'  he  said,  'speak  out,  my  good 
fellow;  what  has  put  it  into  your  head  to  be  on  so  much 
ceremony  with  me  all  of  a  sudden  ?  But,  I  see  how  it  is,  the 
result  is  given  in  one  word — disappointment'  My  silence 
admitted  his  inference  to  the  fullest  extent.  His  counte- 
nance certainly  did  look  rather  blank  for  a  few  seconds ; 
in  truth,  he  had  been  wholly  unprepared  for  the  event.  At 
length  he  said,  with  perfect  cheerfulness :  '  Well,  well,  James, 
so  be  it;  but  you  know  we  must  not  droop,  for  we  can't 
afford  to  give  over.  Since  one  line  has  failed,  we  must  stick 
to  something  else.'  "  This  something  else  was  a  mine  he  had 
already  hit  upon,  of  invention  and  substantial  wealth,  such 
as  Thomas  the  Rhymer,  or  Michael  Scott,  or  any  other  adept 
in  the  black  art,  had  never  dreamed  of. 

Everybody  knows  the  story  of  the  composition  of  "  Wa- 
verley  " — the  most  interesting  story  in  the  annals  of  letters — 
and  how,  some  ten  years  after  its  commencement,  it  was 
fished  out  of  some  old  lumber  in  an  attic,  and  completed  in 
a  few  weeks  for  the  press,  in  1814.  Its  appearance  marks  a 
more  distinct  epoch  in  English  literature  than  that  of  the 
poetry  of  its  author.  All  previous  attempts  in  the  same 
school  of  fiction — a  school  of  English  growth — had  been 
cramped  by  the  limited  information  or  talent  of  the  writers. 
Smollett  had  produced  his  spirited  sea-pieces,  and  Fielding 
his  warm  sketches  of  country  life,  both  of  them  mixed  up 


24  SJX    WALTER  SCOTT. 

with  so  much  Billingsgate  as  required  a  strong  flavor  of  wit 
to  make  them  tolerable.  Richardson  had  covered  acres 
of  canvas  with  his  faithful  family  pictures.  Mrs.  Radcliffe 
had  dipped  up  to  the  elbows  in  horrors ;  while  Miss  Bur- 
ney's  fashionable  gossip  and  Miss  Edgeworth's  Hogarth 
drawings  of  the  prose — not  the  poetry — of  life  and  charac- 
ter had  each  and  all  found  favor  in  their  respective  ways. 
But  a  work  now  appeared  in  which  the  author  swept  over 
the  whole  range  of  character  with  entire  freedom  as  well  as 
fidelity,  ennobling  the  whole  by  high  historic  associations, 
and  in  a  style  varying  with  his  theme,  but  whose  pure  and 
classic  flow  was  tinctured  with  just  so  much  of  poetic  color- 
ing as  suited  the  purposes  of  romance.  It  was  Shakespeare 
in  prose. 

The  work  was  published,  as  we  know,  anonymously. 
Mr.  Gillies  states,  however,  that  while  in  the  press  frag- 
ments of  it  were  communicated  to  "Mr.  Mackenzie,  Dr. 
Brown,  Mrs.  Hamilton,  and  other  savants  or  savantes,  whose 
dicta  on  the  merits  of  a  new  novel  were  considered  unim- 
peachable." By  their  approbation  "  a  strong  body  of  friends 
was  formed,  and  the  curiosity  of  the  public  prepared  the 
way  for  its  reception."  This  may  explain  the  rapidity  with 
which  the  anonymous  publication  rose  into  a  degree  of 
favor  which,  though  not  less  surely,  perhaps,  it  might  have 
been  more  slow  in  achieving.  The  author  jealously  pre- 
served his  incognito,  and,  in  order  to  heighten  the  mysti- 
fication, flung  off  almost  simultaneously  a  variety  of  works, 
in  prose  and  poetry,  any  one  of  which  might  have  been  the 
labor  of  months.  The  public  for  a  moment  was  at  fault. 
There  seemed  to  be  six  Richmonds  in  the  field.  The  world, 
therefore,  was  reduced  to  the  dilemma  of  either  supposing 


WALTER  SCOTT.  25 

that  half  a  dozen  different  hands  could  work  in  precisely 
the  same  style,  or  that  one  could  do  the  work  of  half  a 
dozen.  With  time,  however,  the  veil  wore  thinner  and 
thinner,  until  at  length,  and  long  before  the  ingenious  argu- 
ment of  Mr.  Adolphus,  there  was  scarcely  a  critic  so  pur- 
blind as  not  to  discern  behind  it  the  features  of  the  mighty 
Minstrel. 

Constable  had  offered  seven  hundred  pounds  for  the  new 
novel.  "It  was,"  says  Mr.  Lockhart,  "ten  times  as  much 
as  Miss  Edgeworth  ever  realized  from  any  of  her  popular 
Irish  tales."  Scott  declined  the  offer,  which  had  been  a 
good  one  for  the  bookseller  had  he  made  it  as  many  thou- 
sand. But  it  passed  the  art  of  necromancy  to  divine  this. 

Scott,  once  entered  on  this  new  career,  followed  it  up 
with  an  energy  unrivaled  in  the  history  of  literature.  The 
public  mind  was  not  suffered  to  cool  for  a  moment,  before 
its  attention  was  called  to  another  miracle  of  creation  from 
the  same  hand.  Even  illness  that  would  have  broken  the 
spirit  of  most  men,  as  it  prostrated  the  physical  energies 
of  Scott,  opposed  no  impediment  to  the  march  of  compo- 
sition. When  he  could  no  longer  write,  he  could  dictate ; 
and  in  this  way,  amid  the  agonies  of  a  racking  disease,  he 
composed  "  The  Bride  of  Lammermoor,"  the  "  Legend  of 
Montrose,"  and  a  great  part  of  "Ivanhoe."  The  first,  in- 
deed, is  darkened  with  those  deep  shadows  that  might  seem 
thrown  over  it  by  the  somber  condition  of  its  author.  But 
what  shall  we  say  of  the  imperturbable  dry  humor  of  the  gal- 
lant Captain  Dugald  Dalgetty  of  Drumthwacket,  or  of  the 
gorgeous  revelries  of  Ivanhoe — 

"  Such  sights  as  youthful  poets  dream, 
On  summer  eves  by  haunted  stream  " — 


26  S/tf    WALTER  SCOTT. 

what  shall  we  say  of  such  brilliant  daydreams  for  a  bed  of 
torture  ?  Never  before  had  the  spirit'  triumphed  over  such 
agonies  of  the  flesh.  "The  best  way,"  said  Scott,  in  one 
of  his  talks  with  Gillies,  "  is,  if  possible  >  to  triumph  over  dis- 
ease by  setting  it  at  defiance,  somewhat  on  the  same  prin- 
ciple as  one  avoids  being  stung  by  boldly  grasping  a  nettle." 
The  prose  fictions  were  addressed  to  a  much  larger 
audience  than  the  poems  could  be.  They  had  attractions 
for  every  age  and  every  class.  The  profits,  of  course,  were 
commensurate.  Arithmetic  has  never  been  so  severely 
taxed  as  in  the  computation  of  Scott's  productions,  and 
the  proceeds  resulting  from  them.  In  one  year  he  received 
(or,  more  properly,  was  credited  with — for  it  is  somewhat 
doubtful  how  much  he  actually  received)  fifteen  thousand 
pounds  for  his  novels,  comprehending  the  first  edition  and 
the  copyright.  The  discovery  of  this  rich  mine  furnished 
its  fortunate  proprietor  with  the  means  of  gratifying  the 
fondest,  and  indeed  most  chimerical,  desires.  He  had 
always  coveted  the  situation  of  a  lord  of  acres — a  Scottish 
laird;  where  his  passion  for  planting  might  find  scope  in 
the  creation  of  whole  forests — for  everything  with  him  was 
on  a  magnificent  scale — and  where  he  might  indulge  the 
kindly  feelings  of  his  nature  in  his  benevolent  offices  to  a 
numerous  and  dependent  tenantry.  The  few  acres  of  the 
original  purchase  now  swelled  into  hundreds,  and,  for  aught 
we  know,  thousands ;  for  one  tract  alone  we  find  inciden- 
tally noticed  as  costing  thirty  thousand  pounds.  "  It  rounds 
off  the  property  so  handsomely,"  he  says  in  one  of  his 
letters.  There  was  always  a  corner  to  "  round  off."  The 
mansion,  in  the  mean  time,  from  a  simple  cottage  orne,  was 
amplified  into  the  dimensions  almost,  as  well  as  the  bizarre 


677?    WALTER  SCOTT.  27 

proportions,  of  some  old  feudal  castle.  The  furniture  and 
decorations  were  of  the  costliest  kind;  the  wainscots  of 
oak  and  cedar,  the  floors  tesselated  with  marbles,  or  woods 
of  different  dyes,  the  ceilings  fretted  and  carved  with  all  the 
delicate  tracery  of  a  Gothic  abbey,  the  storied  windows 
blazoned  with  the  richly-colored  insignia  of  heraldry,  the 
walls  garnished  with  time-honored  trophies,  or  curious  speci- 
mens of  art,  or  volumes  sumptuously  bound — in  short,  with 
all  that  luxury  could  demand  or  ingenuity  devise ;  while  a 
copious  reservoir  of  gas  supplied  every  corner  of  the  man- 
sion with  such  fountains  of  light  as  must  have  puzzled  the 
genius  of  the  lamp  to  provide  for  the  less  fortunate  Aladdin. 

Scott's  exchequer  must  have  been  seriously  taxed  in  an- 
other form,  by  the  crowds  of  visitors  whom  he  entertained 
under  his  hospitable  roof.  There  was  scarcely  a  person  of 
note,  or  indeed  not  of  note,  who  visited  that  country  with- 
out paying  his  respects  to  the  Lion  of  Scotland.  Lockhart 
reckons  up  a  full  sixth  of  the  British  peerage  who  had  been 
there  within  his  recollection  ;  and  Captain  Hall,  in  his 
amusing  "  Notes,"  remarks  that  it  was  not  unusual  for  a  doz- 
en or  more  coach-loads  to  find  their  way  into  his  grounds  in 
the  course  of  the  day,  most  of  whom  found  or  forced  an 
entrance  into  the  mansion.  Such  was  the  heavy  tax  paid 
by  his  celebrity,  and,  we  may  add,  his  good  nature.  For, 
if  the  one  had  been  a  whit  less  than  the  other,  he  could 
never  have  tolerated  such  a  nuisance. 

The  cost  of  his  correspondence  gives  one  no  light  idea 
of  the  demands  made  on  his  time,  as  well  as  purse,  in 
another  form.  His  postage  for  letters,  independently  of 
franks,  by  which  a  large  portion  of  it  was  covered,  amounted 
to  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds,  it  seems,  in  the  course  of  the 


28  SIX    WALTER  SCOTT. 

year.  In  this,  indeed,  should  be  included  ten  pounds  for 
a  pair  of  unfortunate  "  Cherokee  Lovers,"  sent  all  the  way 
from  our  own  happy  land,  in  order  to  be  godfathered  by  Sir 
Walter  on  the  London  boards.  Perhaps  the  smart-money 
he  had  to  pay  on  this  interesting  occasion  had  its  influence 
in  mixing  up  rather  more  acid  than  was  natural  to  him  in 
his  judgments  of  our  countrymen.  At  all  events  the  Yan- 
kees find  little  favor  on  the  few  occasions  on  which  he  has 
glanced  at  them  in  his  correspondence.  "  I  am  not  at  all 
surprised,"  he  says,  in  a  letter  to  Miss  Edgeworth,  ap- 
parently chiming  in  with  her  own  tune — "  I  am  not  at  all 
surprised  at  what  you  say  of  the  Yankees.  They  are  a 
people  possessed  of  very  considerable  energy,  quickened 
and  brought  into  eager  action  by  an  honorable  love  of  their 
country,  and  pride  in  their  institutions ;  but  they  are  as  yet 
rude  in  their  ideas  of  social  intercourse,  and  totally  igno- 
rant, speaking  generally,  of  all  the  art  of  good-breeding, 
which  consists  chiefly  in  a  postponement  of  one's  own  petty 
wishes  or  comforts  to  those  of  others.  By  rude  questions 
and  observations,  an  absolute  disrespect  to  other  people's 
feelings,  and  a  ready  indulgence  of  their  own,  they  make 
one  feverish  in  their  company,  though  perhaps  you  may  be 
ashamed  to  confess  the  reason.  But  this  will  wear  off,  and 
is  already  wearing  away.  Men  when  they  have  once  got 
benches  will  soon  fall  into  the  use  of  cushions.  They  are 
advancing  in  the  lists  of  our  literature,  and  they  will  not 
be  long  deficient  in  the  petite  morale,  especially  as  they  have, 
like  ourselves,  the  rage  for  traveling."  On  another  oc- 
casion he  does,  indeed,  admit  having  met  with  in  the 
course  of  his  life  "four  or  five  well-lettered  Americans 
ardent  in  pursuit  of  knowledge,  and  free  from  the  igno- 


WALTER  SCOTT. 


29 


ranee  and  forward  presumption  which  distinguish  many 
of  their  countrymen."  This  seems  hard  measure;  but  per- 
haps we  should  find  it  difficult  among  the  many  who  have 
visited  this  country  to  recollect  as  great  a  number  of  Eng- 
lishmen— and  Scotchmen  to  boot — entitled  to  a  higher  de- 
gree of  commendation.  It  can  hardly  be  that  the  well- 
informed  and  well-bred  men  of  both  countries  make  a  point 
of  staying  at  home ;  so  we  suppose  we  must  look  for  the 
solution  of  the  matter  in  the  existence  of  some  disagree- 
able ingredient,  common  to  the  characters  of  both  nations, 
sprouting  as  they  do  from  a  common  stock,  which  remains 
latent  at  home,  and  is  never  fully  disclosed  till  they  get  into 
a  foreign  climate.  But  as  this  problem  seems  pregnant  with 
philosophical,  physiological,  and,  for  aught  we  know,  psy- 
chological matter,  we  have  not  courage  for  it  here,  but  rec- 
ommend the  solution  to  Miss  Martineau,  to  whom  it  will 
afford  a  very  good  title  for  a  new  chapter  in  her  next  edition. 
The  strictures  we  have  quoted,  however,  to  speak  more 
seriously,  are  worth  attending  to,  coming  as  they  do  from 
a  shrewd  observer,  and  one  whose  judgments,  though  here 
somewhat  colored,  no  doubt,  by  political  prejudice,  are  in 
the  main  distinguished  by  a  sound  and  liberal  philanthropy. 
But,  were  he  ten  times  an  enemy,  we  would  say,  "  Fas  est 
ab  hoste  doceri." 

With  the  splendid  picture  of  the  baronial  residence  at 
Abbotsford,  Mr.  Lockhart  closes  all  that  at  this  present 
writing  we  have  received  of  his  delightful  work  in  this 
country.  And  in  the  last  sentence  the  melancholy  sound 
of  "  the  muffled  drum  "  gives  ominous  warning  of  what  we 
are  to  expect  in  the  sixth  and  concluding  volume.  In  the 
dearth  of  more  authentic  information,  we  will  piece  out  our 


WALTER  SCOTT. 


sketch  with  a  few  facts  gleaned  from  the  somewhat  meager 
bill  of  fare — meager  by  comparison  with  the  rich  banquet 
of  the  true  Amphitryon — afforded  by  the  "  Recollections  " 
of  Mr.  Robert  Pierce  Gillies. 

The  unbounded  popularity  of  the  Waverley  novels  led 
to  still  more  extravagant  anticipations  on  the  part  both  of 
the  publishers  and  author.  Some  hints  of  a  falling  off, 
though  but  slightly,  in  the  public  favor,  were  unheeded  by 
both  parties ;  though,  to  say  truth,  the  exact  state  of  things 
was  never  disclosed  to  Scott,  it  being  Ballantyne's  notion 
that  it  would  prove  a  damper,  and  that  the  true  course  was 
"  to  press  on  more  sail  as  the  wind  lulled."  In  these  san- 
guine calculations  not  only  enormous  sums,  or,  to  speak 
correctly,  bills,  were  given  for  what  had  been  written,  but 
the  author's  drafts,  to  the  amount  of  many  thousand  pounds, 
were  accepted  by  Constable  in  favor  of  works,  the  very 
embryos  of  which  lay  not  only  unformed  but  unimagined, 
in  the  womb  of  time.  In  return  for  this  singular  accommo- 
dation, Scott  was  induced  to  endorse  the  drafts  of  his  pub- 
lisher ;  and  in  this  way  an  amount  of  liabilities  was  incurred 
which,  considering  the  character  of  the  house,  and  its  trans- 
actions, it  is  altogether  inexplicable  that  a  person  in  the 
independent  position  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  should  have  sub- 
jected himself  to  for  a  moment.  He  seems  to  have  had 
entire  confidence  in  the  stability  of  the  firm ;  a  confidence 
to  which  it  seems,  from  Mr.  Gillies's  account,  not  to  have 
been  entitled  from  the  first  moment  of  his  connection  with 
it.  The  great  reputation  of  the  house,  however,  the  success 
and  magnitude  of  some  of  its  transactions,  especially  the 
publication  of  these  novels,  gave  it  a  large  credit,  which 
enabled  it  to  go  forward  with  a  great  show  of  prosperity  in 


SIR    WALTER  SCOTT.  31 

ordinary  times,  and  veiled  the  tottering  state  of  things  prob- 
ably from  Constable's  own  eyes.  It  is  but  the  tale  of  yes- 
terday. The  case  of  Constable  &  Co.  is,  unhappily,  a  very 
familiar  one  to  us.  But,  when  the  hurricane  of  1825  came 
on,  it  swept  away  all  those  buildings  that  were  not  founded 
on  a  rock ;  and  those  of  Messrs.  Constable,  among  others, 
soon  became  literally  mere  castles  in  the  air.  In  plain  Eng- 
lish, the  firm  stopped  payment.  The  assets  were  very 
trifling  in  comparison  with  the  debts.  And  Sir  Walter 
Scott  was  found  on  their  paper  to  the  frightful  amount  of 
one  hundred  thousand  pounds. 

His  conduct  on  the  occasion  was  precisely  what  was  to 
have  been  anticipated  from  one  who  had  declared  on  a  simi- 
lar though  much  less  appalling  conjuncture,  "  I  am  always 
ready  to  make  any  sacrifices  to  do  justice  to  my  engage- 
ments, and  would  rather  sell  anything  or  everything  than 
be  less  than  a  true  man  to  the  world."  He  put  up  his  house 
and  furniture  in  town  at  auction ;  delivered  over  his  per- 
sonal effects  at  Abbotsford,  his  plate,  books,  furniture,  etc., 
to  be  held  in  trust  for  his  creditors  (the  estate  itself  had 
been  recently  secured  to  his  son,  on  occasion  of  his  mar- 
riage), and  bound  himself  to  discharge  a  certain  amount 
annually  of  the  liabilities  of  the  insolvent  firm.  He  then, 
with  his  characteristic  energy,  set  about  the  performance  of 
his  Herculean  task.  He  took  lodgings  in  a  third-rate  house 
in  St.  David's  Street ;  saw  but  little  company ;  abridged  the 
hours  usually  devoted  to  his  meals  and  his  family ;  gave  up 
his  ordinary  exercise ;  and,  in  short,  adopted  the  severe 
habits  of  a  regular  Grub  Street  stipendiary. 

"  For  many  years,"  he  said  to  Mr.  Gillies,  "  I  have  been 
accustomed  to  hard  work,  because  I  found  it  a  pleasure ; 


32  SIR    WALTER  SCOTT. 

now,  with  all  due  respect  for  Falstaff's  principle,  *  nothing 
on  compulsion,'  I  certainly  will  not  shrink  from  work  be- 
cause it  has  become  necessary." 

One  of  his  first  tasks  was  his  "Life  of  Bonaparte," 
achieved  in  the  space  of  thirteen  months.  For  this  he  re- 
ceived fourteen  thousand  pounds,  about  eleven  hundred  per 
month ;  not  a  bad  bargain,  either,  as  it  proved,  for  the  pub- 
lishers. The  first  two  volumes  of  the  nine  which  make  up 
the  English  ^edition  were  a  rifacimento  of  what  he  had  before 
compiled  for  the  "Annual  Register."  With  every  allowance 
for  the  inaccuracies  and  the  excessive  expansion  incident 
to  such  a  flashing  rapidity  of  execution,  the  work,  taking 
into  view  the  broad  range  of  its  topics,  its  shrewd  and  saga- 
cious reflections,  and  the  free,  bold,  and  picturesque  coloring 
of  its  narration — and,  above  all,  considering  the  brief  time  in 
which  it  was  written — is  indisputably  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able monuments  of  genius  and  industry — perhaps  .the  most 
remarkable  ever  recorded. 

Scott's  celebrity  made  everything  that  fell  from  him, 
however  trifling — the  dew-drops  from  the  lion's  mane — of 
value.  But  none  of  the  many  adventures  he  embarked  in, 
or  rather  set  afloat,  proved  so  profitable  as  the  republication 
of  his  novels,  with  his  notes  and  illustrations.  As  he  felt 
his  own  strength  in  the  increasing  success  of  his  labors,  he 
appears  to  have  relaxed  somewhat  from  them,  and  to  have 
again  resumed  somewhat  of  his  ancient  habits,  and  in  a 
mitigated  degree  his  ancient  hospitality.  But  still  his  exer- 
tions were  too  severe,  and  pressed  heavily  on  the  springs  of 
health,  already  deprived  by  age  of  their  former  elasticity 
and  vigor.  At  length,  in  1831,  he  was  overtaken  by  one 
of  tho'se  terrible  shocks  of  paralysis  which  seem  to  have 


SIR    WALTER  SCOTT.  33 

been  constitutional  in  his  family,  but  which,  with  more  pre- 
caution and  under  happier  auspices,  might  doubtless  have 
been  postponed  if  not  wholly  averted.  At  this  time  he  had, 
in  the  short  space  of  little  more  than  five  years,  by  his  sacri- 
fices and  efforts,  discharged  about  two  thirds  of  the  debt  for 
which  he  was  responsible ;  an  astounding  result,  wholly  un- 
paralleled in  the  history  of  letters !  There  is  something  in- 
expressibly painful  in  this  spectacle  of  a  generous  heart  thus 
courageously  contending  with  fortune,  bearing  up  against 
the  tide  with  unconquerable  spirit,  and  finally  overwhelmed 
by  it  just  within  reach  of  shore. 

The  rest  of  his  story  is  one  of  humiliation  and  sorrow. 
He  was  induced  to  make  a  voyage  to  the  Continent,  to  try 
the  effect  of  a  more  genial  climate.  Under  the  sunny  sky 
of  Italy  he  seemed  to  gather  new  strength  for  a  while.  But 
his  eye  fell  with  indifference  on  the  venerable  monuments 
which  in  better  days  would  have  kindled  all  his  enthusiasm. 
The  invalid  sighed  for  his  own  home  at  Abbotsford.  The 
heat  of  the  weather  and  the  fatigue  of  rapid  travel  brought 
on  another  shock  which  reduced  him  to  a  state  of  deplor- 
able imbecility.  In  this  condition  he  returned  to  his  own 
halls,  where  the  sight  of  early  friends  and.  of  the  beautiful 
scenery — the  creation,  as  it  were,  of  his  own  hands — seemed 
to  impart  a  gleam  of  melancholy  satisfaction,  which  soon, 
however,  sunk  into  insensibility.  To  his  present  situation 
might  well  be  applied  the  exquisite  verses  which  he  indited 
on  another  melancholy  occasion  : 

"  Yet  not  the  landscape  to  mine  eye 

Bears  those  bright  hues  that  once  it  bore ; 
Though  evening,  with  her  richest  dye, 

Flames  o'er  the  hills  of  Ettrick's  shore. 
3 


34  SJX    WALTER  SCOTT. 

"  With  listless  look  along  the  plain 

I  see  Tweed's  silver  current  glide, 
And  coldly  mark  the  holy  fane 
Of  Melrose  rise  in  ruined  pride. 


"  The  quiet  lake,  the  balmy  air, 

The  hill,  the  stream,  the  tower,  the  tree — 
Are  they  still  such  as  once  they  were, 
Or  is  the  dreary  change  in  me  ?  " 

Providence  in  its  mercy  did  not  suffer  the  shattered 
frame  long  to  outlive  the  glorious  spirit  which  had  informed 
it.  He  breathed  his  last  on  September  21,  1832.  His  re- 
mains were  deposited,  as  he  had  always  desired,  in  the 
hoary  abbey  of  Dryburgh  ;  and  the  pilgrim  from  many  a 
distant  clime  shall  repair  to  the  consecrated  spot  so  long  as 
the  reverence  for  exalted  genius  and  worth  shall  survive  in 
the  human  heart. 

This  sketch,  brief  as  we  could  make  it,  of  the  literary 
history  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  has  extended  so  far  as  to  leave 
but  little  space  for — what  Lockhart's  volumes  afford  ample 
materials  for — his  personal  character.  Take  it  for  all  and 
all,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  this  character  is  probably 
the  most  remarkable  on  record.  -There  is  no  man  that  we 
now  recall  of  historical  celebrity  who  combined  in  so  emi- 
nent a  degree  the  highest  qualities  of  the  moral,  the  intel- 
lectual, and  the  physical.  He  united  in  his  own  character 
what  hitherto  had  been  found  incompatible.  Though  a 
poet  and  living  in  an  ideal  world,  he  was  an  exact,  methodi- 
cal man  of  business ;  though  achieving  with  the  most  won- 
derful fertility  of  genius,  he  was  patient  and  laborious  ;  a 
mousing  antiquarian,  yet  with  the  most  active  interest  in 


WALTER  SCOTT.  35 

the  present  and  whatever  was  going  on  around  him ;  with  a 
strong  turn  for  a  roving  life  and  military  adventure,  he  was 
yet  chained  to  his  desk  more  hours  at  some  periods  of  his 
life  than  a  monkish  recluse ;  a  man  with  a  heart  as  capa- 
cious as  his  head ;  a  Tory,  brim  full  of  Jacobitism,  yet  full 
of  sympathy  and  unaffected  familiarity  with  all  classes,  even 
the  humblest ;  a  successful  author,  without  pedantry  and 
without  conceit ;  one,  indeed,  at  the  head  of  the  republic  of 
letters,  and  yet  with  a  lower  estimate  of  letters,  as  compared 
with  other  intellectual  pursuits,  than  was  eVer  hazarded 
before. 

The  first  quality  of  his  character,  or  rather  that  which 
forms  the  basis  of  it,  as  of  all  great  characters,  was  his  en- 
ergy. We  see  it  in  his  early  youth  triumphing  over  the 
impediments  of  nature,  and  in  spite  of  lameness  making  him 
conspicuous  in  every  sort  of  athletic  exercise — clambering 
up  dizzy  precipices,  wading  through  treacherous  fords,  and 
performing  feats  of  pedestrianism  that  make  one's  joints 
ache  to  read  of.  As  he  advanced  in  life  we  see  the  same 
force  of  purpose  turned  to  higher  objects.  A  striking  ex- 
ample occurs  in  his  organization  of  the  journals  and  the 
publishing-house  in  opposition  to  Constable.  In  what  Her- 
culean drudgery  did  not  -this  latter  business,  in  which  he 
undertook  to  supply  matter  for  the  nimble  press  of  Ballan- 
tyne,  involve  him !  While,  in  addition  to  his  own  concerns, 
he  had  to  drag  along  by  his  solitary  momentum  a  score  of 
heavier  undertakings,  that  led  Lockhart  to  compare  him  to 
a  steam-engine  with  a  train  of  coal-wagons  hitched  on  to  it. 
"Yes,"  said  Scott,  laughing,  and  making  a  crashing  cut  with 
his  axe  (for  they  were  felling  larches),  "and  there  was  a 
cursed  lot  of  dung-carts,  too." 


36  Sf£    WALTER  SCOTT. 

We  see  the  same  powerful  energies  triumphing  over  dis- 
ease at  a  later  period,  when,  indeed,  nothing  but  a  resolu- 
tion to  get  the  better  of  it  enabled  him  to  do  so.  "  Be 
assured,"  he  remarked  to  Mr.  Gillies,  "  that  if  pain  could 
have  prevented  my  application  to  literary  labor,  not  a  page 
of  *  Ivanhoe '  would  have  been  written.  Now,  if  I  had  given 
way  to  mere  feelings  and  ceased  to  work,  it  is  a  question 
whether  the  disorder  might  not  have  taken  a  deeper  root 
and  become  incurable."  But  the  most  extraordinary  in- 
stance of  this  trait  is  the  readiness  with  which  he  assumed, 
and  the  spirit  with  which  he  carried  through  till  his  mental 
strength  broke  down  under  it,  the  gigantic  task  imposed  on 
him  by  the  failure  of  Constable. 

It  mattered  little,  indeed,  what  the  nature  of  the  task 
was,  whether  it  were  organizing  an  opposition  to  a  political 
faction,  or  a  troop  of  cavalry  to  resist  invasion,  or  a  medley 
of  wild  Highlanders  and  Edinburgh  cockneys  to  make  up 
a  royal  puppet-show — a  loyal  celebration — for  "his  Most 
Sacred  Majesty  " — he  was  the  master-spirit  that  gave  the 
cue  to  the  whole  dramatis  persona.  This  potent  impulse 
showed  itself  in  the  thoroughness  with  which  he  prescribed 
not  merely  the  general  orders  but  the  execution  of  the  mi- 
nutest details  in  his  own  person.  Thus  all  around  him  was 
the  creation,  as  it  were,  of  his  individual  exertion.  His 
lands  waved  with  forests  planted  with  his  own  hands,  and 
in  process  of  time  cleared  by  his  own  hands.  He  did  not 
lay  the  stones  in  mortar  exactly  for  his  whimsical  castle, 
but  he  seems  to  have  superintended  the  operation  from  the 
foundation  to  the  battlements.  The  antique  relics,  the 
curious  works  of  art,  the  hangings  and  furniture  even  with 
which  his  halls  were  decorated,  were  specially  contrived  or 


WALTER   SCOTT. 


37 


selected  by  him ;  and,  to  read  his  letters  at  this  time  to  his 
friend  Terry,  one  might  fancy  himself  perusing  the  corre- 
spondence of  an  upholsterer,  so  exact  and  technical  is  he  in 
his  instructions.  We  say  this  not  in  disparagement  of  his 
great  qualities.  It  is  only  the  more  extraordinary,  for,  while 
he  stooped  to  such  trifles,  he  was  equally  thorough  in  mat- 
ters of  the  highest  moment.  It  was  a  trait  of  character. 

Another  quality  which,  like  the  last,  seems  to  have 
given  the  tone  to  his  character,  was  his  social  or  benevolent 
feelings.  His  heart  was  an  unfailing  fountain  which,  not 
merely  the  distresses,  but  the  joys,  of  his  fellow  creatures 
made  to  flow  like  water.  In  early  life,  and  possibly  some- 
times in  later,  high  spirits  and  a  vigorous  constitution  led 
him  occasionally  to  carry  his  social  propensities  into  con- 
vivial excess.  But  he  never  was  in  danger  of  the  habitual 
excess  to  which  a  vulgar  mind — and  sometimes,  alas !  one 
more  finely  tuned — abandons  itself.  Indeed,  with  all  his 
conviviality,  it  was  not  the  sensual  relish,  but  the  social, 
which  acted  on  him.  He  was  neither  gourmet  nor  gour- 
mand ;  but  his  social  meetings  were  endeared  to  him  by  the 
free  interchange  of  kindly  feelings  with  his  friends.  La 
Bruyere  says  (and  it  is  odd  he  should  have  found  it  out  in 
Louis  XIV.'s  court),  "  The  heart  has  more  to  do  than  the 
head  with  the  pleasures,  or  rather  promoting  the  pleasures, 
of  society  "  ((<  Un  homme  est  d'un  meilleur  commerce  dans 
la  societe  par  le  cceur  que  par  1'esprit  ").  If  report,  the  re- 
port of  travelers,  be  true,  we  Americans,  at  least  the  New- 
Englanders,  are  too  much  perplexed  with  the  cares  and 
crosses  of  life,  to  afford  many  genuine  specimens  of  this 
bonhomie.  However  this  may  be,  we  all,  doubtless,  know 
some  such  character,  whose  shining  face,  the  index  of  a 


38  S/ff    WALTER  SCOTT. 

cordial  heart  radiant  with  beneficent  pleasure,  diffuses  its 
own  exhilarating  glow  wherever  it  appears.  Rarely,  indeed, 
is  this  precious  quality  found  united  with  the  most  exalted 
intellect.  Whether  it  be  that  Nature,  chary  of  her  gifts, 
does  not  care  to  shower  too  many  of  them  on  one  head ;  or, 
that  the  public  admiration  has  led  the  man  of  intellect  to 
set  too  high  a  value  on  himself,  or  at  least  his  own  pursuits, 
to  take  an  interest  in  the  inferior  concerns  of  others ;  or, 
that  the  fear  of  compromising  his  dignity  puts  him  "  on 
points "  with  those  who  approach  him ;  or,  whether,  in 
truth,  the  very  magnitude  of  his  own  reputation  throws  a 
freezing  shadow  over  us  little  people  in  his  neighborhood ; 
whatever  be  the  cause,  it  is  too  true  that  the  highest  powers 
of  mind  are  very  often  deficient  in  the  only  one  which  can 
make  the  rest  of  much  worth  in  society — the  power  of 
pleasing. 

Scott  was  not  one  of  these  little  great.  His  was  not  one 
of  those  dark-lantern  visages  which  concentrate  all  their 
light  on  their  own  path  and  are  black  as  midnight  to  all 
about  them.  He  had  a  ready  sympathy,  a  word  of  conta- 
gious kindness  or  cordial  greeting  for  all.  His  manners,  too, 
were  of  a  kind  to  dispel  the  icy  reserve  and  awe  which  his 
great  name  was  calculated  to  inspire.  His  frank  address 
was  a  sort  of  open  sesame  to  every  heart.  He  did  not  deal 
in  sneers,  the  poisoned  weapons  which  come  not  from  the 
head,  as  the  man  who  launches  them  is  apt  to  think,  but 
from  an  acid  heart,  or  perhaps  an  acid  stomach,  a  very  com- 
mon laboratory  of  such  small  artillery.  Neither  did  Scott 
amuse  the  company  with  parliamentary  harangues  or  meta- 
physical disquisitions.  His  conversation  was  of  the  nar- 
rative kind,  not  formal,  but  as  casually  suggested  by  some 


SIR    WALTER   SCOTT.  39 

passing  circumstance  or  topic,  and  thrown  in  by  way  of 
illustration.  He  did  not  repeat  himself,  however,  but  con- 
tinued to  give  his  anecdotes  such  variations,  by  rigging 
them  out  in  a  new  "cocked  hat  and  walking-cane,"  as  he 
called  it,  that  they  never  tired  like  the  thrice-told  tale  of  a 
chronic  raconteur.  He  allowed  others,  too,  to  take  their 
turn,  and  thought  with  the  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's : 

"  Carve  to  all  but  just  enough, 
Let  them  neither  starve  nor  stuff ; 
And  that  you  may  have  your  due, 
Let  your  neighbors  carve  for  you." 

He  relished  a  good  joke,  from  whatever  quarter  it  came, 
and  was  not  over-dainty  in  his  manner  of  testifying  his 
satisfaction.  "  In  the  full  tide  of  mirth  he  did  indeed  laugh 
the  heart's  laugh,"  says  Mr.  Adolphus.  "  Give  me  an  hon- 
est laugher,"  said  Scott  himself,  on  another  occasion,  when 
a  buckram  man  of  fashion  had  been  paying  him  a  visit  at 
Abbotsford.  His  manners,  free  from  affectation  or  artifice 
of  any  sort,  exhibited  the  spontaneous  movements  of  a  kind 
disposition,  subject  to  those  rules  of  good-breeding  which 
Nature  herself  might  have  dictated.  In  this  way  he  an- 
swered his  own  purposes  admirably,  as  a  painter  of  charac- 
ter, by  putting  every  man  in  good  humor  with  himself;  in 
the  same  manner  as  a  cunning  portrait-painter  amuses  his 
sitters  with  such  store  of  fun  and  anecdote  as  may  throw 
them  off  their  guard,  and  call  out  the  happiest  expressions 
of  their  countenances. 

Scott,  in  his  wide  range  of  friends  and  companions,  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  over-fastidious.  In  the  instance  of 
John  Ballantyne  it  has  exposed  him  to  some  censure.  In- 


40  SfjR    WALTER  SCOTT. 

deed,  a  more  worthless  fellow  never  hung  on  the  skirts  of  a 
great  man ;  for  he  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  throw  a  decent 
veil  over  the  grossest  excesses.  But  then  he  had  been  the 
schoolboy  friend  of  Scott ;  had  grown  up  with  him  in  a 
sort  of  dependence — a  relation  which  begets  a  kindly  feel- 
ing in  the  party  that  confers  the  benefits  at  least.  How 
strong  it  was  in  him  may  be  inferred  from  his  remark  at 
his  funeral.  "  I  feel,"  said  Scott,  mournfully,  as  the  solem- 
nity was  concluded — "  I  feel  as  if  there  would  be  less  sun- 
shine for  me  from  this  day  forth."  It  must  be  admitted, 
however,  that  his  intimacy  with  little  Rigdumfunnidos, 
whatever  apology  it  may  find  in  Scott's  heart,  was  not  very 
creditable  to  his  taste. 

But  the  benevolent  principle  showed  itself  not  merely 
in  words,  but  in  the  more  substantial  form  of  actions.  How 
many  are  the  cases  recorded  of  indigent  merit  which  he 
drew  from  obscurity,  and  almost  warmed  into  life  by  his 
own  generous  and  most  delicate  patronage.  Such  were  the 
cases,  among  others,  of  Leyden,  Weber,  Hogg.  How  often 
and  how  cheerfully  did  he  supply  such  literary  contribu- 
tions as  were  solicited  by  his  friends — and  they  taxed  him 
pretty  liberally — amid  all  the  pressure  of  business,  and  at 
the  height  of  his  fame  when  his  hours  were  golden  hours 
indeed  to  him !  In  the  more  vulgar  and  easier  forms  of 
charity  he  did  not  stint  his  hand,  though,  instead  of  direct 
assistance,  he  preferred  to  enable  others  to  assist  them- 
selves ;  in  this  way  fortifying  their  good  habits,  and  reliev- 
ing them  from  the  sense  of  personal  degradation. 

But  the  place  where  his  benevolent  impulses  found  their 
proper  theatre  for  expansion  was  his  own  home ;  surrounded 
by  a  happy  family,  and  dispensing  all  the  hospitalities  of  a 


677?    WALTER  SCOTT.  4I 

great  feudal  proprietor.  "  There  are  many  good  things  in 
life,"  he  says,  in  one  of  his  letters,  "whatever  satirists  and 
misanthropes  may  say  to  the  contrary,  but  probably  the  best 
of  all,  next  to  a  conscience  void  of  offense  (without  which, 
by  the  by,  they  can  hardly  exist),  are  the  quiet  exercise  and 
enjoyment  of  the  social  feelings  in  which  we  are  at  once 
happy  ourselves  and  the  cause  of  happiness  to  them  who 
are  dearest  to  us."  Every  page  of  the  work  almost  shows 
us  how  intimately  he  blended  himself  with  the  pleasures 
and  the  pursuits  of  his  own  family,  watched  over  the  educa- 
tion of  his  children,  shared  in  their  rides,  their  rambles,  and 
sports,  losing  no  opportunity  of  kindling  in  their  young 
minds  a  love  of  virtue  and  honorable  principles  of  action. 
He  delighted,  too,  to  collect  his  tenantry  around  him,  multi- 
plying holidays,  when  young  and  old  might  come  together 
under  his  roof-tree,  when  the  jolly  punch  was  liberally  dis- 
pensed by  himself  and  his  wife  among  the  elder  people,  and 
the  Hogmanay  cakes  and  pennies  were  distributed  among 
the  young  ones  ;  while  his  own  children  mingled  in  the  end- 
less reels  and  hornpipes  on  the  earthen  floor,  and  the  laird 
himself,  mixing  in  the  groups  of  merry  faces,  had  his  "  pri- 
vate joke  for  every  old  wife  or  '  gausie  carle,'  his  arch  com- 
pliment for  the  ear  of  every  bonnie  lass,  and  his  hand  and 
his  blessing  for  the  head  of  every  little  Eppie  Daidle  from 
Abbotstown  or  Broomylees."  "  Sir  Walter,"  said  one  of 
his  old  retainers,  "  speaks  to  every  man  as  if  he  were  his 
blood-relation."  No  wonder  that  they  should  have  re- 
turned this  feeling  with  something  warmer  than  blood-rela- 
tions usually  do.  Mr.  Gillies  tells  an  anecdote  of  the  "  Et- 
rick  Shepherd,"  showing  how  deep  a  root  such  feelings, 
notwithstanding  his  rather  odd  way  of  expressing  them, 


42  SIX    WALTER  SCOTT. 

sometimes  had  taken  in  his  honest  nature.  "  Mr.  James 
Ballantyne  walking  home  with  him  one  evening  from  Scott's, 
where,  by  the  by,  Hogg  had  gone  uninvited,  happened  to 
observe  :  '  I  do  not  at  all  like  this  illness  of  Scott's.  I  have 
often  seen  him  look  jaded  of  late,  and  am  afraid  it  is  seri- 
ous.' 'Haud  your  tongue,  or  I'll  gar  you  measure  your 
length  on  the  pavement !  '  replied  Hogg.  *  You  fause, 
down-hearted  loon,  that  you  are;  ye  daur  to  speak  as  if 
Scott  were  on  his  deathbed !  It  can  not  be,  it  must  not 
be!  I  will  not  suffer  you  to  speak  that  gait.'  The  senti- 
ment was  like  that  of  Uncle  Toby  at  the  bedside  of  Le 
Fevre ;  and,  at  these  words,  the  Shepherd's  voice  became 
suppressed  with  emotion." 

But  Scott's  sympathies  were  not  confined  to  his  species ; 
and,  if  he  treated  them  like  blood-relations,  he  treated  his 
brute  followers  like  personal  friends.  Every  one  remembers 
old  Maida,  and  faithful  Camp,  the  "  dear  old  friend,"  whose 
loss  cost  him  a  dinner.  Mr.  Gillies  tells  us  that  he  went  into 
his  study  on  one  occasion,  when  he  was  winding  off  his 
"Vision  of  Don  Roderick."  "  *  Look  here,'  said  the  poet, 
'  I  have  just  begun  to  copy  over  the  rhymes  that  you  heard 
to-day,  and  applauded  so  much.  Return  to  supper,  if  you 
can ;  only  don't  be  late,  as  you  perceive  we  keep  early  hours, 
and  Wallace  will  not  suffer  me  to  rest  after  six  in  the  morn  - 
ing. — Come,  good  dog,  and  help  the  poet.'  At  this  hint, 
Wallace  seated  himself  upright  on  a  chair  next  his  master, 
who  offered  him  a  newspaper,  which  he  directly  seized,  look- 
ing very  wise,  and  holding  it  firmly  and  contentedly  in  his 
mouth.  Scott  looked  at  him  with  great  satisfaction,  for  he 
was  excessively  fond  of  dogs.  '  Very  well,'  said  he,  '  now  we 
shall  get  on.'  And  so  I  left  them  abruptly,  knowing  that  my 


SIR    WALTER  SCOTT.  43 

*  absence  would  be  the  best  company.'"  This  fellowship, 
indeed,  extended  much  further  than  to  his  canine  followers, 
of  which,  including  hounds,  terriers,  mastiffs,  and  mongrels, 
he  had  certainly  a  goodly  assortment.  We  find,  also,  Grimal- 
kin installed  in  a  responsible  post  in  the  library,  and  out  of 
doors  pet  hens,  pet  donkeys,  and — tell  it  not  in  Judea — a 
pet  pig ! 

Scott's  sensibilities,  though  easily  moved,  and  widely  dif- 
fused, were  warm  and  sincere.  None  shared  more  cordially 
in  the  troubles  of  his  friends  ;  but  on  all  such  occasions,  with 
a  true  manly  feeling,  he  thought  less  of  mere  sympathy  than 
of  the  most  effectual  way  for  mitigating  their  sorrows.  After 
a  touching  allusion,  in  one  of  his  epistles,  to  his  dear  friend 
Erskine's  death,  he  concludes,  "  I  must  turn  to,  and  see  what 
can  be  done  about  getting  some  pension  for  his  daughters." 
In  another  passage,  which  may  remind  one  of  some  of  the 
exquisite  touches  in  Jeremy  Taylor,  he  indulges  in  the  fol- 
lowing beautiful  strain  of  philosophy :  "  The  last  three  or 
four  years  have  swept  away  more  than  half  the  friends  with 
whom  I  lived  in  habits  of  great  intimacy.  So  it  must  be 
with  us — 

'  When  ance  life's  day  draws  near  the  gloamin' ' — 

and  yet  we  proceed  with  our  plantations  and  plans  as  if  any 
tree  but  the  sad  cypress  would  accompany  us  to  the  grave, 
where  our  friends  have  gone  before  us.  It  is  the  way  of  the 
world,  however,  and  must  be  so  ;  otherwise  life  would  be 
spent  in  unavailing  mourning  for  those  whom  we  have  lost. 
It  is  better  to  enjoy  the  society  of  those  who  remain  to  us." 
His  well-disciplined  heart  seems  to  have  confessed  the  influ- 
ence of  this  philosophy,  in  his  most  ordinary  relations.  "  I 


44  SJ&    WALTER  SCOTT. 

can't  help  it,"  was  a  favorite  maxim  of  his,  "  and  therefore 
will  not  think  about  it ;  for  that  at  least  I  can  help." 

Among  his  admirable  qualities  must  not  be  omitted  a 
certain  worldly  sagacity  or  shrewdness,  which  is  expressed 
as  strongly  as  any  individual  trait  can  be,  in  some  of  his  por- 
traits, t  especially  in  the  excellent  one  of  him  by  Leslie.  In- 
deed, his  countenance  would  seem  to  exhibit,  ordinarily, 
much  more  of  Dandie  Dinmont's  benevolent  shrewdness 
than  of  the  eye  glancing  from  earth  to  heaven,  which  in  fancy 
we  assign  to  the  poet,  and  which,  in  some  moods,  must  have 
been  his.  This  trait  may  be  readily  discerned  in  all  his 
business  transactions,  which  he  managed  with  perfect  knowl- 
edge of  character,  as  well  as  of  his  own  rights.  No  one 
knew  better  than  he  the  market  value  of  an  article ;  and, 
though  he  underrated  his  literary  wares,  as  to  their  mere 
literary  rank,  he  set  as  high  a  money  value  on  them,  and 
made  as  sharp  a  bargain,  as  any  of  the  trade  could  have 
done.  In  his  business  concerns,  indeed,  he  managed  rather 
too  much  ;  or,  to  speak  more  correctly,  was  too  fond  of  mix- 
ing up  mystery  in  his  transactions,  which,  like  most  myste- 
ries, proved  of  little  service  to  their  author.  Scott's  corre- 
spondence, especially  with  his  son,  affords  obvious  examples 
of  shrewdness,  in  the  advice  he  gives  as  to  his  deportment 
in  the  novel  situations  and  society  into  which  the  young 
cornet  was  thrown.  Occasionally,  indeed,  in  the  cautious 
hints  about  etiquette  and  social  observances,  we  are  re- 
minded of  that  ancient  "  arbiter  elegantiarum,"  Lord  Ches- 
terfield ;  though,  it  must  be  confessed,  there  is  throughout  a 
high  moral  tone,  which  the  noble  lord  did  not  very  scrupu- 
lously affect. 

Another  feature  in   Scott's   character  was  his   loyalty; 


SIX    WALTER   SCOTT.  45 

which,  indeed,  some  people  would  extend  into  a  more  gen- 
eral deference  to  rank  not  royal.  We  do,  indeed,  meet  with 
a  tone  of  deference  occasionally  to  the  privileged  orders  (or 
rather  privileged  persons,  as  the  King,  his  own  Chief,  etc., 
for  to  the  mass  of  stars  and  garters  he  showed  no  such  re- 
spect), which  falls  rather  unpleasantly  on  the  ear  of  a  re- 
publican. But,  independently  of  the  feelings  which  should 
rightfully  have  belonged  to  him  as  the  subject  of  a  monarchy, 
and  without  which  he  must  have  been  a  false-hearted  subject, 
his  own  were  heightened  by  a  poetical  coloring,  that  mingled 
in  his  mind  even  with  much  more  vulgar  relations  of  life. 
At  the  opening  of  the  regalia  in  Holyrood  House,  when  the 
honest  burgomaster  deposited  the  crown  on  the  head  of  one 
of  the  young  ladies  present,  the  good  man  probably  saw 
nothing  more  in  the  dingy  diadem  than  we  should  have 
seen — a  head-piece  for  a  set  of  men  no  better  than  himself, 
and,  if  the  old  adage  of  a  "  dead  lion  "  holds  true,  not  quite 
so  good.  But  to  Scott's  imagination  other  views  were  un- 
folded. "  A  thousand  years  their  cloudy  wings  expanded  " 
around  him,  and,  in  the  dim  visions  of  distant  times,  he  be- 
held the  venerable  line  of  monarchs  who  had  swayed  the 
councils  of  his  country  in  peace,  and  led  her  armies  in  bat- 
tle. The  "  golden  round  "  became  in  his  eye  the  symbol  of 
his  nation's  glory ;  and,  as  he  heaved  a  heavy  oath  from  his 
heart,  he  left  the  room  in  agitation,  from  which  he  did  not 
speedily  recover.  There  was  not  a  spice  of  affectation  in 
this — for  who  ever  accused  Scott  of  affectation  ? — but  there 
was  a  good  deal  of  poetry,  the  poetry  of  sentiment. 

We  have  said  that  this  feeling  mingled  in  the  more  com- 
mon concerns  of  his  life.  His  cranium,  indeed,  to  judge 
from  his  busts,  must  have  exhibited  a  strong  development  of 


46  SIR    WALTER  SCOTT. 

the  organ  of  veneration.  He  regarded  with  reverence  every- 
thing connected  with  antiquity.  His  establishment  was  on 
the  feudal  scale ;  his  house  was  fashioned  more  after  the 
feudal  ages  than  his  own  ;  and  even  in  the  ultimate  distribu- 
tion of  his  fortune,  although  the  circumstance  of  having 
made  it  himself  relieved  him  from  any  legal  necessity  of  con- 
travening the  suggestions  of  natural  justice,  he  showed  such 
attachment  to  the  old  aristocratic  usage  as  to  settle  nearly 
the  whole  of  it  on  his  eldest  son. 

The  influence  of  this  poetic  sentiment  is  discernible  in 
his  most  trifling  acts,  in  his  tastes,  his  love  of  the  arts, 
his  social  habits.  His  museum,  house,  and  grounds  were 
adorned  with  relics,  curious  not  so  much  from  their  workman- 
ship as  their  historic  associations.  It  was  the  ancient  foun- 
tain from  Edinburgh,  the  Tolbooth  lintels,  the  blunderbuss 
and  spleughan  of  Rob  Roy,  the  drinking-cup  of  Prince  Char- 
lie, or  the  like.  It  was  the  same  in  the  arts.  The  tunes  he 
loved  were  not  the  refined  and  complex  melodies  of  Italy,  but 
the  simple  notes  of  his  native  minstrelsy,  from  the  bagpipe  of 
John  of  Skye,  or  from  the  harp  of  his  own  lovely  and  accom- 
plished daughter.  So  also  in  painting.  It  was  not  the  mas- 
terly designs  of  the  great  Flemish  and  Italian  schools  that 
adorned  his  walls,  but  some  portrait  of  Claverhouse,  or  of 
Queen  Mary,  or  of  "  glorious  old  John."  In  architecture,  we 
see  the  same  spirit  in  the  singular  "  romance  of  stone  and 
lime,"  which  may  be  said  to  have  been  his  own  device,  down 
to  the  minutest  details  of  its  finishing.  We  see  it  again  in  the 
joyous  celebrations  of  his  feudal  tenantry,  the  good  old  fes- 
tivals, the  Hogmanay,  the  Kirn,  etc.,  long  fallen  into  desue- 
tude, when  the  old  Highland  piper  sounded  the  same  wild 
pibroch  that  had  so  often  summoned  the  clans  together,  for 


S7X    WALTER  SCOTT.  47 

war  or  for  wassail,  among  the  fastnesses  of  the  mountains. 
To  the  same  source,  in  fine,  may  be  traced  the  feelings  of 
superstition  which  seemed  to  hover  round  Scott's  mind  like 
some  "  strange,  mysterious  dream,"  giving  a  romantic  color- 
ing to  his  conversation  and  his  writings,  but  rarely  if  ever 
influencing  his  actions.  It  was  a  poetic  sentiment. 

Scott  was  a  Tory  to  the  backbone.  Had  he  come  into 
the  world  half  a  century  sooner  he  would,  no  doubt,  have 
made  a  figure  under  the  banner  of  the  Pretender.  He  was 
at  no  great  pains  to  disguise  his  political  creed ;  witness  his 
jolly  drinking-song  on  the  acquittal  of  Lord  Melville.  This 
was  verse  ;  but  his  prose  is  not  much  more  qualified.  "  As 
for  Whiggery  in  general,"  he  says,  in  one  of  his  letters,  "  I 
can  only  say  that,  as  no  man  can  be  said  to  be  utterly  over- 
set until  his  rump  has  been  higher  than  his  head,  so  I  cannot 
read  in  history  of  any  free  state  which  has  been  brought  to 
slavery  until  the  rascal  and  uninstructed  populace  had  had 
their  short  hour  of  anarchical  government,  which  naturally 
leads  to  the  stern  repose  of  military  despotism.  .  .  .  With 
these  convictions,  I  am  very  jealous  of  Whiggery,  under  all 
modifications ;  and  I  must  say  my  acquaintance  with  the  to- 
tal want  of  principle  in  some  of  its  warmest  professors  does 
not  tend  to  recommend  it."  With  all  this,  however,  his 
Toryism  was  not,  practically,  of  that  sort  which  blunts  a 
man's  sensibilities  for  those  who  are  not  of  the  same  porce- 
lain clay  with  himself.  No  man,  Whig  or  Radical,  ever  had 
less  of  this  pretension,  or  treated  his  inferiors  with  greater 
kindness,  and  indeed  familiarity  ;  a  circumstance  noticed 
by  every  visitor  at  his  hospitable  mansion,  who  saw  him 
strolling  round  his  grounds,  taking  his  pinch  of  snuff  out  of 
the  mull  of  some  "  gray-haired  old  hedger,"  or  leaning  on 


48  S7tf    WALTER  SCOTT. 

honest  Tom  Purdie's  shoulder,  and  taking  sweet  counsel  as 
to  the  right  method  of  thinning  a  plantation.  But,  with  all 
this  familiarity,  no  man  was  better  served  by  his  domestics. 
It  was  the  service  of  love ;  the  only  service  that  power  can 
not  command,  and  money  can  not  buy. 

Akin  to  the  feelings  of  which  we  have  been  speaking  was 
the  truly  chivalrous  sense  of  honor  which  stamped  his  whole 
conduct.  We  do  not  mean  that  Hotspur  honor  which  is 
roused  only  by  the  drum  and  fife — though  he  says  of  him- 
self, "  I  like  the  sound  of  a  drum  as  well  as  Uncle  Toby 
ever  did  " — but  that  honor  which  is  deep-seated  in  the  heart 
of  every  true  gentleman,  shrinking  with  sensitive  delicacy 
from  the  least  stain  or  imputation  of  a  stain  on  his  faith. 
"  If  we  lose  everything  else,"  writes  he  on  a  trying  occasion 
to  a  friend  who  was  not  so  nice  in  this  particular,  "  we  will 
at  least  keep  our  honor  unblemished."  It  reminds  one  of 
the  pithy  epistle  of  a  kindred  chivalrous  spirit,  Francis  I., 
to  his  mother  from  the  unlucky  field  of  Pavia :  "  Tout  est 
perdu,  fors  1'honneur."  Scott's  latter  years  furnished  a  noble 
commentary  on  the  sincerity  of  his  manly  principles. 

Little  is  said  directly  of  his  religious  sentiments  in  the 
biography.  They  seem  to  have  harmonized  well  with  his 
political.  He  was  a  member  of  the  English  Church,  a 
stanch  champion  of  established  forms,  and  a  sturdy  enemy 
to  everything  that  savored  of  the  sharp  twang  of  Puritanism. 
On  this  ground,  indeed,  the  youthful  Sampson  used  to 
wrestle  manfully  with  worthy  Dominie  Mitchell,  who,  no 
doubt,  furnished  many  a  screed  of  doctrine  for  the  Rev. 
Peter  Poundtext,  Master  Nehemiah  Holdenough,  and  other 
lights  of  the  Covenant.  Scott  was  no  friend  to  cant  under 
any  form.  But,  whatever  were  his  speculative  opinions,  in 


SIR    WALTER  SCOTT. 


49 


practice  his  heart  overflowed  with  that  charity  which  is  the 
life-spring  of  our  religion.  And,  whenever  he  takes  occa- 
sion to  allude  to  the  subject  directly,  he  testifies  a  deep 
reverence  for  the  truths  of  revelation  as  well  as  for  its  divine 
Original. 

Whatever  estimate  be  formed  of  Scott's  moral  qualities, 
his  intellectual  were  of  a  kind  which  well  entitled  him  to 
the  epithet  conferred  on  Lope  de  Vega,  "monstruo  de 
naturaleza,"  "  a  miracle  of  nature."  His  mind,  indeed,  did 
not  seem  to  be  subjected  to  the  same  laws  which  control  the 
rest  of  his  species.  His  memory,  as  is  usual,  was  the  first 
of  his  powers  fully  developed.  While  an  urchin  at  school 
he  could  repeat  whole  cantos,  he  says,  of  Ossian  and  of 
Spenser.  In  riper  years  we  are  constantly  meeting  with 
similar  feats  of  his  achievement.  Thus  on  one  occasion  he 
repeated  the  whole  of  a  poem  in  some  penny  magazine  inci- 
dentally alluded  to,  which  he  had  not  seen  since  he  was  a 
schoolboy.  On  another,  when  the  Ettrick  Shepherd  was 
trying  ineffectually  to  fish  up  from  his  own  recollections 
some  scraps  of  a  ballad  he  had  himself  manufactured  years 
before,  Scott  called  to  him,  "  Take  your  pencil,  Jemmy,  and 
I  will  tell  it  to  you  word  for  word  " ;  and  he  accordingly  did 
so.  But  it  is  needless  to  multiply  examples  of  feats  so  star- 
tling as  to  look  almost  like  the  tricks  of  a  conjurer. 

What  is  most  extraordinary  is,  that  while  he  acquired 
with  such  facility  that  the  bare  perusal  or  the  repetition  of  a 
thing  once  to  him  was  sufficient,  he  yet  retained  it  with  the 
greatest  pertinacity.  Other  men's  memories  are  so  much 
jostled  in  the  rough  and  tumble  of  life  that  most  of  the  facts 
get  sifted  out  nearly  as  fast  as  they  are  put  in ;  so  that  we 
are  in  the  same  pickle  with  those  unlucky  daughters  of  Da- 
4 


5° 


SfjR    WALTER  SCOTT. 


nans,  of  schoolboy  memory,  obliged  to  spend  the  greater 
part  of  the  time  in  replenishing.  But  Scott's  memory  seemed 
to  be  hermetically  sealed,  suffering  nothing  once  fairly  in 
to  leak  out  again.  This  was  of  immense  service  to  him 
when  he  took  up  the  business  of  authorship,  as  his  whole 
multifarious  stock  of  facts,  whether  from  books  or  observa- 
tion, became  in  truth  his  stock  in  trade,  ready  furnished  to 
his  hands.  This  may  explain  in  part,  though  it  is  not  less 
marvelous,  the  cause  of  his  rapid  execution  of  works,  often 
replete  with  rare  and  curious  information.  The  labor,  the 
preparation,  had  been  already  completed.  His  whole  life 
had  been  a  business  of  preparation.  When  he  ventured,  as 
in  the  case  of  "  Rokeby  "  and  of  "  Quentin  Durward,"  on 
ground  with  which  he  had  not  been  familiar,  we  see  how 
industriously  he  set  about  new  acquisitions. 

In  most  of  the  prodigies  of  memory  which  we  have  ever 
known,  the  overgrowth  of  that  faculty  seems  to  have  been 
attained  at  the  expense  of  all  the  others.  But  in  Scott  the 
directly  opposite  power  of  the  imagination — the  inventive 
power — was  equally  strongly  developed,  and  at  the  same 
early  age.  For  we  find  him  renowned  for  story-craft  while 
at  school.  How  many  a  delightful  fiction,  indeed,  warm 
with  the  flush  of  ingenuous  youth,  did  he  not  throw  away 
on  the  ears  of  thoughtless  childhood  which,  had  they  been 
duly  registered,  might  now  have  amused  children  of  a 
larger  growth  !  We  have  seen  Scott's  genius  in  its  prime 
and  its  decay.  The  frolic  graces  of  childhood  are  alone 
wanting. 

The  facility  with  which  he  threw  his  ideas  into  language 
was  also  remarked  very  early.  One  of  his  first  ballads,  and 
a  long  one,  was  dashed  off  at  the  dinner-table.  His  "  Lay  " 


SIR    WALTER  SCOTT.  5I 

was  written  at  the  rate  of  a  canto  a  week.  "Waverley,"  or 
rather  the  last  two  volumes  of  it,  cost  the  evenings  of  a 
summer  month.  Who  that  has  ever  read  the  account  can 
forget  the  movements  of  that  mysterious  hand  as  descried 
by  the  two  students  from  the  window  of  a  neighboring  attic, 
throwing  off  sheet  after  sheet  with  untiring  rapidity  of  the 
pages  destined  to  immortality  ?  Scott  speaks  pleasantly 
enough  of  this  marvelous  facility  in  a  letter  to  his  friend 
Morritt :  "  When  once  I  set  my  pen  to  the  paper  it  will 
walk  fast  enough.  I  am  sometimes  tempted  to  leave  it 
alone,  and  see  whether  it  will  not  write  as  well  without  the 
assistance  of  my  head  as  with  it.  A  hopeful  prospect  for 
the  reader." 

As  to  the  time  and  place  of  composition,  he  appears  to 
have  been  nearly  indifferent.  He  possessed  entire  power  of 
abstraction,  and  it  mattered  little  whether  he  were  nailed  to 
his  clerk's  desk,  under  the  drowsy  eloquence  of  some  long- 
winded  barrister,  or  dashing  his  horse  into  the  surf  on  Por- 
tobello  sands,  or  rattling  in  a  post-chaise,  or  amid  the  hum 
of  guests  in  his  overflowing  halls  at  Abbotsford — it  mattered 
not,  the  same  well-adjusted  little  packet,  "  nicely  corded  and 
sealed,"  was  sure  to  be  ready  at  the  regular  time  for  the 
Edinburgh  mail.  His  own  account  of  his  composition,  to  a 
friend  who  asked  when  he  found  time  for  it,  is  striking 
enough.  "  Oh,"  said  Scott,  "  I  lie  simmering  over  things  for 
an  hour  or  so  before  I  get  up — and  there's  the  time  I  am 
dressing  to  overhaul  my  half-sleeping  half-waking  projet  de 
chapitre — and  when  I  get  the  paper  before  me  it  commonly 
runs  off  pretty  easily.  Besides,  I  often  take  a  doze  in  the 
plantations,  and,  while  Tom  marks  out  a  dike  or  a  drain, 
as  I  have  directed,  one's  fancy  may  be  running  its  ain  riggs 


52 


SIX    WALTER  SCOTT. 


in  some  other  world."  Never,  indeed,  did  this  sort  of  sim- 
mering produce  such  a  splendid  bill  of  fare.  ' 

The  quality  of  the  material  under  such  circumstances  is, 
in  truth,  the  great  miracle  of  the  whole.  The  execution  of 
so  much  work  as  a  mere  feat  of  penmanship  would  un- 
doubtedly be  very  extraordinary ;  but,  as  a  mere  scrivener's 
miracle,  would  be  hardly  worth  recording.  It  is  a  sort  of 
miracle  that  is  every  day  performing  under  our  own  eyes,  as 
it  were,  by  Messrs.  James,  Bulwer  &  Co.,  who,  in  all  the 
various  staples  of  "  comedy,  history,  pastoral,  pastoral-comi- 
cal, historical-pastoral,"  etc.,  etc.,  supply  their  own  market 
and  ours  too  with  all  that  can  be  wanted.  In  Spain  and  in 
Italy,  too,  we  may  find  abundance  of  improvvisatori  and  im- 
prowisatrici,  who  perform  miracles  of  the  same  sort  in  verse, 
too,  in  languages  whose  vowel  terminations  make  it  very 
easy  for  the  thoughts  to  tumble  into  rhyme  without  any 
malice  prepense.  Governor  Raffles,  in  his  account  of  Java, 
tells  us  of  a  splendid  avenue  of  trees  before  his  house,  which 
in  the  course  of  a  year  shot  up  to  the  height  of  forty  feet. 
But  who  shall  compare  the  brief,  transitory  splendors  of  a 
fungous  vegetation  with  the  mighty  monarch  of  the  forest, 
sending  his  roots  deep  into  the  heart  of  the  earth,  and  his 
branches,  amid  storm  and  sunshine,  to  the  heavens  ?  And 
is  not  the  latter  the  true  emblem  of  Scott  ?  For  who  can 
doubt  that  his  prose  creations,  at  least,  will  gather  strength 
with  time,  living  on  through  succeeding  generations,  even 
when  the  language  in  which  they  are  written,  like  those  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  shall  cease  to.  be  a  living  language  ? 

The  only  writer  deserving  in  these  respects  to  be  named 
with  Scott  is  Lope  de  Vega,  who  in  his  own  day  held  as 
high  a  rank  in  the  republic  of  letters  as  our  great  contem- 


SIX    WALTER  SCOTT. 


53 


porary.  The  beautiful  dramas  which  he  threw  off  for  the 
entertainment  of  the  capital,  and  whose  success  drove  Cer- 
vantes from  the  stage,  outstripped  the  abilities  of  an  aman- 
uensis to  copy.  His  intimate  friend  Montalvan,  one  of  the 
most  popular  and  prolific  authors  of  the  time,  tells  us  that 
he  undertook  with  Lope  once  to  supply  the  theatre  with  a 
comedy — in  verse,  and  in  three  acts,  as  the  Spanish  dramas 
usually  were — at  a  very  short  notice.  In  order  to  get 
through  his  half  as  soon  as  his  partner,  he  rose  by  two  in 
the  morning,  and  at  eleven  had  completed  it ;  an  extraordi- 
nary feat,  certainly,  since  a  play  extended  to  between  thirty 
and  forty  pages,  of  a  hundred  lines  each.  Walking  into  the 
garden  he  found  his  brother  poet  pruning  an  orange-tree. 
"  Well,  how  do  you  get  on  ? "  said  Montalvan.  "  Very 
well,"  answered  Lope.  "  I  rose  betimes,  at  five  ;  and,  after 
I  had  got  through,  ate  my  breakfast;  since  which  I  have 
written  a  letter  of  fifty  triplets,  and  watered  the  whole  of 
the  garden,  which  has  tired  me  a  good  deal." 

But  a  little  arithmetic  will  best  show  the  comparative 
fertility  of  Scott  and  Lope  de  Vega.  It  is  so  germane  to 
the  present  matter  that  we  shall  make  no  apology  for  tran- 
scribing here  some  computations  from  our  last  July  num- 
ber; and,  as  few  of  our  readers,  we  suspect,  have  the  air- 
tight memory  of  Sir  Walter,  we  doubt  not  that  enough  of  it 
has  escaped  them  by  this  time  to  excuse  us  from  equipping 
it  with  one  of  those  "  cocked  hats  and  walking-sticks  "  with 
which  he  furbished  up  an  old  story : 

"  It  is  impossible  to  state  the  results  of  Lope  de  Vega's  labors  in 
any  form  that  will  not  powerfully  strike  the  imagination.  Thus,  he 
has  left  twenty-one  million  three  hundred  thousand  verses  in  print, 
besides  a  mass  of  manuscript.  He  furnished  the  theatre,  according 


54  WALTER  SCOTT. 

to  the  statement  of  his  intimate  friend  Montalvan,  with  eighteen 
hundred  regular  plays  and  four  hundred  autos  or  religious  dramas 
— all  acted.  He  composed,  according  to  his  own  statement,  more 
than  one  hundred  comedies  in  the  almost  incredible  space  of  twen- 
ty-four hours  each ;  and  a  comedy  averaged  between  two  and  three 
thousand  verses,  great  part  of  them  rhymed  and  interspersed  with 
sonnets,  and  other  more  difficult  forms  of  versification.  He  lived 
seventy-two  years  ;  and  supposing  him  to  have  employed  fifty  of 
that  period  in  composition,  although  he  filled  a  variety  of  engrossing 
vocations  during  that  time,  he  must  have  averaged  a  play  a  week, 
to  say  nothing  of  twenty-one  volumes,  quarto,  of  miscellaneous 
works,  including  five  epics,  written  in  his  leisure  moments,  and  all 
now  in  print ! 

"  The  only  achievements  we  can  recall  in  literary  history  bearing 
any  resemblance  to,  though  falling  far  short  of  this,  are  those  of  our 
illustrious  contemporary,  Sir  Walter  Scott.  The  complete  edition 
of  his  works,  recently  advertised  by  Murray,  with  the  addition  of 
two  volumes,  of  which  Murray  has  not  the  copyright,  probably  con- 
tains ninety  volumes,  small  octavo.  [To  these  should  further  be 
added  a  large  supply  of  matter  for  the  "  Edinburgh  Annual  Regis- 
ter," as  well  as  other  anonymous  contributions.]  Of  these,  forty- 
eight  volumes  of  novels  and  twenty-one  of  history  and  biography 
were  produced  between  1814  and  1831,  or  in  seventeen  years.  These 
would  give  an  average  of  four  volumes  a  year,  or  one  for  every  three 
months  during  the  whole  of  that  period,  to  which  must  be  added 
twenty-one  volumes  of  poetry  and  prose  previously  published.  The 
mere  mechanical  execution  of  so  much  work,  both  in  his  case  and 
Lope  de  Vega's,  would  seem  to  be  scarce  possible  in  the  limits 
assigned.  Scott,  too,  was  as  variously  occupied  in  other  ways  as 
his  Spanish  rival ;  and  probably,  from  the  social  hospitality  of  his 
life,  spent  a  much  larger  portion  of  his  time  in  no  literary  occupa- 
tion at  all." 

Of  all   the  wonderful  dramatic   creations   of  Lope  de 


WALTER  SCOTT.  55 

Vega's  genius  what  now  remains  ?  Two  or  three  plays  only 
keep  possession  of  the  stage,  and  few,  very  few,  are  still  read 
with  pleasure  in  the  closet.  They  have  never  been  collected 
into  a  uniform  edition,  and  are  now  met  with  in  scattered 
sheets  only  on  the  shelves  of  some  mousing  bookseller,  or 
collected  in  miscellaneous  parcels  in  the  libraries  of  the 
curious. 

Scott,  with  all  his  facility  of  execution,  had  none  of  that 
pitiable  affectation  sometimes  found  in  men  of  genius,  who 
think  that  the  possession  of  this  quality  may  dispense  with 
regular,  methodical  habits  of  study.  He  was  most  economi- 
cal of  time.  He  did  not,  like  Voltaire,  speak  of  it  as  "  a 
terrible  thing  that  so  much  time  should  be  wasted  in  talk- 
ing." He  was  too  little  of  a  pedant  and  far  too  benevolent 
not  to  feel  that  there  are  other  objects  worth  living  for  than 
mere  literary  fame.  But  he  grudged  the  waste  of  time  on 
merely  frivolous  and  heartless  objects.  "As  for  dressing 
when  we  are  quite  alone,"  he  remarked  one  day  to  Mr.  Gil- 
lies, whom  he  had  taken  home  with  him  to  a  family  dinner, 
"  it  is  out  of  the  question.  Life  is  not  long  enough  for  such 
fiddle-faddle."  In  the  early  part  of  his  life  he  worked  late 
at  night.  But  subsequently  from  a  conviction  of  the  supe- 
rior healthiness  of  early  rising,  as  well  as  the  desire  to  se- 
cure, at  all  hazards,  a  portion  of  the  day  for  literary  labor, 
he  rose  at  five  the  year  -round ;  no  small  effort,  as  any  one 
will  admit  who  has  seen  the  pain  and  difficulty  which  a  reg- 
ular bird  of  night  finds  in  reconciling  his  eyes  to  daylight. 
He  was  scrupulously  exact,  moreover,  in  the  distribution  of 
his  hours.  In  one  of  his  letters  to  his  friend  Terry,  the 
player,  replete,  as  usual,  with  advice  that  seems  to  flow 
equally  from  the  head  and  the  heart,  he  says,  in  reference 


56  Sf£    WALTER  SCOTT. 

to  the  practice  of  dawdling  away  one's  time :  "  A  habit  of  the 
mind  it  is  which  is  very  apt  to  beset  men  of  intellect  and 
talent,  especially  when  their  time  is  not  regularly  filled  up, 
but  left  to  their  own  arrangement.  But  it  is  like  the  ivy 
round  the  oak,  and  ends  by  limiting,  if  it  does  not  destroy, 
the  power  of  manly  and  necessary  exertion.  I  must  love  a 
man  so  well  to  whom  I  offer  such  a  word  of  advice  that  I 
will  not  apologize  for  it,  but  expect  to  hear  you  are  become 
as  regular  as  a  Dutch  clock — hours,  quarters,  minutes,  all 
marked  and  appropriated"  With  the  same  emphasis  he  in- 
culcates the  like  habits  on  his  son.  If  any  man  might  dis- 
pense with  them  it  was  surely  Scott.  But  he  knew  that 
without  them  the  greatest  powers  of  mind  will  run  to  waste 
and  water  but  the  desert. 

Some  of  the  literary  opinions  of  Scott  are  singular,  con- 
sidering, too,  the  position  he  occupied  in  the  world  of  let- 
ters. "  I  promise  you,"  he  says  in  an  epistle  to  an  old  friend, 
"  my  oaks  will  outlast  my  laurels ;  and  I  pique  myself  more 
on  my  compositions  for  manure  than  on  any  other  compo- 
sitions to  which  I  was  ever  accessary."  This  may  seem 
badinage.  But  he  repeatedly,  both  in  writing  and  conversa- 
tion, places  literature,  as  a  profession,  below  other  intellec- 
tual professions,  and  especially  the  military.  The  Duke  of 
Wellington,  the  representative  of  the  last,  seems  to  have 
drawn  from  him  a  very  extraordinary  degree  of  deference, 
which,  we  can  not  but  think,  smacks  a  little  of  that  strong 
relish  for  gunpowder  which  he  avows  in  himself. 

It  is  not  very  easy  to  see  on  what  this  low  estimate  of 
literature  rested.  As  a  profession,  it  has  too  little  in  com- 
mon with  more  active  ones  to  afford  much  ground  for  run- 
ning a  parallel.  The  soldier  has  to  do  with  externals ;  and 


WALTER  SCOTT.  57 

his  contests  and  triumphs  are  over  matter,  in  its  various 
forms,  whether  of  man  or  material  nature.  The  poet  deals 
with  the  bodiless  forms  of  air,  of  fancy  lighter  than  air.  His 
business  is  contemplative  ;  the  other's  is  active,  and  depends 
for  its  success  on  strong  moral  energy  and  presence  of  mind. 
He  must,  indeed,  have  genius  of  the  highest  order  to  effect 
his  own  combinations,  anticipate  the  movements  of  his  ene- 
my, and  dart  with  eagle  eye  on  his  vulnerable  point.  But 
who  shall  say  that  this  practical  genius,  if  we  may  so  term  it, 
is  to  rank  higher  in  the  scale  than  the  creative  power  of  the 
poet,  the  spark  from  the  mind  of  Divinity  itself? 

The  orator  might  seem  to  afford  better  ground  for  com- 
parison, since,  though  his  theatre  of  action  is  abroad,  he  may 
be  said  to  work  with  much  the  same  tools  as  the  writer. 
Yet,  how  much  of  his  success  depends  on  qualities  other 
than  intellectual!  "  Action,"  said  the  father  of  eloquence, 
"  action,  action,  are  the  three  most  essential  things  to  an 
orator."  How  much,  indeed,  depends  on  the  look,  the  ges- 
ture, the  magical  tones  of  voice,  modulated  to  the  passions 
he  has  stirred ;  and  how  much  on  the  contagious  sympathies 
of  the  audience  itself,  which  drown  everything  like  criticism 
in  the  overwhelming  tide  of  emotion !  If  any  one  would 
know  how  much,  let  him,  after  patiently  standing 

"  till  his  feet  throb, 

And  his  head  thumps,  to  feed  upon  the  breath 
Of  patriots  bursting  with  heroic  rage," 

read  the  same  speech  in  the  columns  of  a  morning  newspa- 
per, or  in  the  well-concocted  report  of  the  orator  himself. 
The  productions  of  the  writer  are  subjected  to  a  fiercer  or- 
deal. He  has  no  excited  sympathies  of  numbers  to  hurry 


58  SJX    WALTER  SCOTT. 

his  readers  along  over  his  blunders.  He  is  scanned  in  the 
calm  silence  of  the  closet.  Every  flower  of  fancy  seems 
here  to  wilt  under  the  rude  breath  of  criticism ;  every  link 
in  the  chain  of  argument  is  subjected  to  the  touch  of  prying 
scrutiny,  and  if  there  be  the  least  flaw  in  it  it  is  sure  to  be 
detected.  There  is  no  tribunal  so  stern  as  the  secret  tribu- 
nal of  a  man's  own  closet,  far  removed  from  all  the  sympa- 
thetic impulses  of  humanity.  Surely  there  is  no  form  in 
which  intellect  can  be  exhibited  to  the  world  so  completely 
stripped  of  all  adventitious  aids  as  the  form  of  written  com- 
position. But,  says  the  practical  man,  let  us  estimate  things 
by  their  utility.  "  You  talk  of  the  poems  of  Homer,"  said  a 
mathematician,  "  but  after  all  what  do  they  prove  ?"  A 
question  which  involves  an  answer  somewhat  too  volumi- 
nous for  the  tail  of  an  article.  But,  if  the  poems  of  Homer 
were,  as  Heeren  asserts,  the  principal  bond  which  held  the 
Grecian  states  together,  and  gave  them  a  national  feeling, 
they  "  prove  "  more  than  all  the  arithmeticians  of  Greece — 
and  there  were  many  cunning  ones  in  it — ever  did.  The 
results  of  military  skill  are  indeed  obvious.  The  soldier  by 
a  single  victory  enlarges  the  limits  of  an  empire ;  he  may  do 
more — he  may  achieve  the  liberties  of  a  nation,  or  roll  back 
the  tide  of  barbarism  ready  to  overwhelm  them.  Wellington 
was  placed  in  such  a  position,  and  nobly  did  he  do  his 
work — or,  rather,  he  was  placed  at  the  head  of  such  a  gigan- 
tic moral  and  physical  apparatus  as  enabled  him  to  do  it. 
With  his  own  unassisted  strength  of  course  he  could  have 
done  nothing.  But  it  is  on  his  own  solitary  resources  that 
the  great  writer  is  to  rely.  And  yet  who  shall  say  that  the 
triumphs  of  Wellington  have  been  greater  than  those  of 
Scott — whose  works  are  familiar  as  household  words  to  every 


SIX    WALTER  SCOTT.  59 

fireside  in  his  own  land,  from  the  castle  to  the  cottage  ;  have 
crossed  oceans  and  deserts,  and,  with  healing  on  their  wings, 
found  their  way  to  the  remotest  regions ;  have  helped  to 
form  the  character,  until  his  own  mind  may  be  said  to  be  in- 
corporated into  those  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  his  fellow- 
men  ?  Who  is  there  that  has  not,  at  some  time  or  other,  felt 
the  heaviness  of  his  heart  lightened,  his  pains  mitigated,  and 
his  bright  moments  of  life  made  still  brighter  by  the  magical 
touches  of  his  genius  ?  And  shall  we  speak  of  his  victories 
as  less  real,  less  serviceable  to  humanity,  less  truly  glorious, 
than  those  of  the  greatest  captain  of  his  day  ?  The  triumphs 
of  the  warrior  are  bounded  by  the  narrow  theatre  of  his  own 
age.  But  those  of  a  Scott  or  a  Shakespeare  will  be  renewed, 
with  greater  and  greater  luster,  in  ages  yet  unborn,  when  the 
victorious  chieftain  shall  be  forgotten,  or  shall  live  only  in 
the  song  of  the  minstrel  and  the  page  of  the  chronicler. 

But,  after  all,  this  sort  of  parallel  is  not  very  gracious  nor 
very  philosophical ;  and,  to  say  truth,  is  somewhat  foolish. 
We  have  been  drawn  into  it  by  the  not  random,  but  very 
deliberate,  and  in  our  poor  judgment  very  disparaging  esti- 
mate by  Scott  of  his  own  vocation ;  and,  as  we  have  taken 
the  trouble  to  write  it,  our  readers  will  excuse  us  from  blot- 
ting it  out.  There  is  too  little  ground  for  the  respective  par- 
ties to  stand  on  for  a  parallel.  As  to  the  pedantic  cui  bono 
standard,  it  is  impossible  to  tell  the  final  issues  of  a  single 
act ;  how  can  we  then  hope  to,  those  of  a  course  of  action  ? 
As  for  the  honor  of  different  vocations,  there  never  was  a  truer 
sentence  than  the  stale  one  of  Pope — stale  now  because  it  is 

so  true — 

"  Act  well  your  part,  there  all  the  honor  lies." 

And  it  is  the  just  boast  of  our  own  country  that  in  no  civil- 


60  SIX    WALTER  SCOTT. 

ized  nation  is  the  force  of  this  philanthropic  maxim  so  nobly 
illustrated  as  in  ours — thanks  to  our  glorious  institutions. 

A  great  cause,  probably,  of  Scott's  low  estimate  of  letters, 
was  the  facility  with  which  he  wrote  himself.  What  costs  us 
little  we  are  apt  to  prize  little.  If  diamonds  were  as  com- 
mon as  pebbles,  and  gold  dust  as  any  other,  who  would 
stoop  to  gather  them  ?  It  was  the  prostitution  of  his  muse, 
by  the  by,  for  this  same  gold  dust  which  brought  a  sharp 
rebuke  on  the  poet  from  Lord  Byron,  in  his  "  English 

Bards  "— 

"  For  this  we  spurn  Apollo's  venal  son  "  ; 

a  coarse  cut,  and  the  imputation  about  as  true  as  most  satire 
— that  is,  not  true  at  all.  This  was  indited  in  his  lordship's 
earlier  days,  when  he  most  chivalrously  disclaimed  all  pur- 
pose of  bartering  his  rhymes  for  gold.  He  lived  long  enough, 
however,  to  weigh  his  literary  wares  in  as  nice  a  money- 
balance  as  any  more  vulgar  manufacturer  ever  did.  And,  in 
truth,  it  would  be  ridiculous  if  the  produce  of  the  brain 
should  not  bring  its  price,  in  this  form  as  well  as  any  other ; 
there  is  little  danger,  we  imagine,  of  finding  too  much  gold 
in  the  bowels  of  Parnassus. 

Scott  took  a  more  sensible  view  of  things.  In  a  letter  to 
Ellis,  written  soon  after  the  publication  of  the  "  Minstrelsy," 
he  observes  :  "  People  may  say  this  and  that  of  the  pleasure 
of  fame,  or  of  profit,  as  a  motive  of  writing ;  I  think  the  only 
pleasure  is  in  the  actual  exertion  and  research,  and  I  would 
no  more  write  upon  any  other  terms  than  I  would  hunt 
merely  to  dine  upon  hare-soup.  At  the  same  time,  if  credit 
and  profit  came  unlocked  for  I  would  no  more  quarrel  with 
them  than  with  the  soup."  Even  this  declaration  was  some- 
what more  magnanimous  than  was  warranted  by  his  subse- 


WALTER  SCOTT.  61 

quent  conduct.  The  truth  is,  he  soon  found  out,  especially 
after  the  Waverley  vein  had  opened,  that  he  had  hit  on  a 
gold  mine.  The  prodigious  returns  he  got  gave  the  whole 
thing  the  aspect  of  a  speculation.  Every  new  work  was  an 
adventure ;  and  the  proceeds  naturally  suggested  the  indul- 
gence of  the  most  extravagant  schemes  of  expense,  which, 
in  their  turn,  stimulated  him  to  fresh  efforts.  In  this  way 
the  "  profits  "  became,  whatever  they  might  have  been  once, 
a  principal  incentive  to,  as  they  were  the  recompense  of,  ex- 
ertion. His  productions  were  cash  articles,  and  were  esti- 
mated by  him  more  on  the  Hudibrastic  rule  of  "  the  real 
worth  of  a  thing  "  than  by  any  fanciful  standard  of  fame. 
He  bowed  with  deference  to  the  judgment  of  the  book-sell- 
ers, and  trimmed  his  sails  dexterously  as  the  "  aura  popu- 
laris  "  shifted.  "If  it  is  na  weil  bobbit,"  he  writes  to  his 
printer,  on  turning  out  a  less  lucky  novel,  "  we'll  bobb  it 
again."  His  muse  was  of  that  school  who  seek  the  greatest 
happiness  of  the  greatest  possible  number.  We  can  hardly 
imagine  him  invoking  her,  like  Milton — 

"  Still  govern  thou  my  song, 
Urania,  and  fit  audience  find,  though  few." 

Still  less  can  we  imagine  him,  like  the  blind  old  bard,  feed- 
ing his  soul  with  visions  of  posthumous  glory,  and  spinning 
out  epics  for  five  pounds  apiece. 

It  is  singular  that  Scott,  although  he  set  as  high  a  money 
value  on  his  productions  as  the  most  enthusiastic  of  the 
"  trade  "  could  have  done,  in  a  literary  view,  should  have 
held  them  so  cheap.  "Whatever  others  may  be,"  he  said, 
"  I  have  never  been  a  partisan  of  my  own  poetry ;  as  John 
Wilkes  declared  that,  '  in  the  height  of  his  success,  he  had 


62  SIX    WALTER  SCOTT. 

himself  never  been  a  Wilkite.'  "  Considering  the  poet's  pop- 
ularity! this  was  but  an  indifferent  compliment  to  the  taste 
of  his  age.  With  all  this  disparagement  of  his  own  produc- 
tions, however,  Scott  was  not  insensible  to  criticism.  He 
says  somewhere,  indeed,  that  "  if  he  had  been  conscious  of 
a  single  vulnerable  point  in  himself,  he  would  not  have  taken 
up  the  business  of  writing."  But  on  another  occasion  he 
writes,  "  I  make  it  a  rule  never  to  read  the  attacks  made  upon 
me."  And  Captain  Hall  remarks  :  "  He  never  reads  the  criti- 
cisms on  his  books ;  this  I  know,  from  the  most  unquestion- 
able authority.  Praise,  he  says,  gives  him  no  pleasure,  and 
censure  annoys  him."  Madame  de  Graffigny  says,  also,  of 
Voltaire,  that  "  he  was  altogether  indifferent  to  praise,  but  the 
least  word  from  his  enemies  drove  him  crazy."  Yet  both 
these  authors  banqueted  on  the  sweets  of  panegyric  as  much 
as  any  who  ever  lived.  They  were  in  the  condition  of  an 
epicure,  whose  palate  has  lost  its  relish  for  the  dainty  fare  in 
which  it  has  been  so  long  reveling,  without  becoming  less 
sensible  to  the  annoyances  of  sharper  and  coarser  flavors. 
It  may  afford  some  consolation  to  humble  mediocrity,  to  the 
less  fortunate  votaries  of  the  muse,  that  those  who  have 
reached  the  summit  of  Parnassus  are  not  much  more  con- 
tented with  their  condition  than  those  who  are  scrambling 
among  the  bushes  at  the  bottom  of  the  mountain.  The  fact 
seems  to  be,  as  Scott  himself  intimates  more  than  once,  that 
the  joy  is  in  the  chase,  whether  in  the  prose  or  the  poetry 
of  life. 

But  it  is  high  time  to  terminate  our  lucubrations,  which, 
however  imperfect  and  unsatisfactory,  have  already  run  to  a 
length  that  must  trespass  on  the  patience  of  the  reader.  We 
rise  from  the  perusal  of  these  delightful  volumes  with  the 


SIR    WALTER  SCOTT.  63 

same  sort  of  melancholy  feeling  with  which  we  wake  from  a 
pleasant  dream.  The  concluding  volume,  of  which  such 
ominous  presage  is  given  in  the  last  sentence  of  the  fifth, 
has  not  yet  reached  us ;  but  we  know  enough  to  anticipate 
the  sad  catastrophe  it  is  to  unfold  of  the  drama.  In  those 
which  we  have  seen,  however,  we  have  beheld  a  succession 
of  interesting  characters  come  upon  the  scene — and  pass 
away  to  their  long  home.  "  Bright  eyes  now  closed  in  dust, 
gay  voices  for  ever  silenced,"  seem  to  haunt  us,  too,  as  we 
write.  The  imagination  reverts  to  Abbotsford — the  romantic 
and  once  brilliant  Abbotsford — the  magical  creation  of  his 
hands.  We  see  its  halls  radiant  with  the  hospitality  of  Ms 
benevolent  heart,  thronged  with  pilgrims  from  every  land, 
assembled  to  pay  homage  at  the  shrine  of  genius,  echoing  to 
the  blithe  music  of  those  festal  holidays,  when  young  and  old 
met  to  renew  the  usages  of  the  good  old  times. 

"  These  were  its  charms — but  all  these  charms  are  fled." 

Its  courts  are  desolate,  or  trodden  only  by  the  foot  of  the 
stranger.  The  stranger  sits  under  the  shadows  of  the  trees 
which  his  hand  planted.  The  spell  of  the  enchanter  is  dis- 
solved. His  wand  is  broken.  And  the  mighty  Minstrel 
himself  now  sleeps  in  the  bosom  of  the  peaceful  scenes, 
embellished  by  his  taste  and  which  his  genius  has  made 
immortal. 


THE 

SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF   WOMAN* 


INVENTIVE  writing  is  full  of  commonplace  respecting 
woman,  drawn  from  the  feelings  or  the  imagination,  some- 
times depicting  her  character  as  a  brilliant  constellation  of 
all  the  virtues,  sometimes  as  a  virulent  concentration  of  all 
the  vices  and  weaknesses  incident  to  human  nature.  For 
instance,  we  take  up  Otway's  "  Orphan,"  and  we  read  in  one 
place  verses  like  these  : 

"  Who  can  describe 

Women's  hypocrisies  ?     Their  subtile  wiles, 
Betraying  smiles,  feigned  tears,  inconstancies  ? 
Their  painted  outsides  and  corrupted  minds  ? 
The  sum  of  all  their  follies  and  their  falsehoods  ?  " 

And  again,  at  another  page,  these : 

"  Your  sex 

Was  never  in  the  right :  you're  always  false 
Or  silly.    Even  your  dreams  are  not  more 

*  i.  Memoirs  of  Celebrated  Women  of  all  Countries.     By  Madame 
Junot.     2  vols. 

2.  Noble  Deeds  of  Woman.     2  vols.,  I2mo.     1836. 

3.  The  History  of  the  Condition  of  Women  in  Various  Ages  and 
Nations.     By  Mrs.  D.  L.  Child.     2  vols.,  I2mo.     1835. 

4.  Legouve,  Le  Merite  des  Femmes. 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          65 

Fantastical  than  your  appetites.     You  think 
Of  nothing  twice.     Opinion  you  have  none  : 
To-day  you  are  nice,  to-morrow  not  so  fine ; 
Now  smile,  then  frown  ;  now  sorrowful,  then  glad  ; 
Now  pleased,  now  not ;  and  all  you  know  not  why. 
Virtue  you  affect." 

Is  this  harsh  ?  Turn  the  leaves,  and  you  come  to  the 
other  side  of  the  question,  in  that  beautiful  passage  of  the 
same  Otway's  "  Venice  Preserved  "  : 

"  O  woman,  lovely  woman  !  Nature  made  you 
To  temper  man ;  we  had  been  brutes  without  you. 
Angels  are  painted  fair,  to  look  like  you ; 
There's  in  you  all  that  we  believe  of  heaven ; 
Amazing  brightness,  purity,  and  truth, 
Eternal  joy  and  everlasting  love." 

It  would  be  curious,  if  in  our  way,  to  run  over  what  the 
novelists  and  dramatists  have  had  to  say  upon  this  point. 
In  the  latter  especially  there  is  a  perfect  arsenal  of  the 
small  artillery  of  stale  reproaches  on  feminine  weakness  and 
falsehood.  In  reference  to  all  such  matter,  whether  set 
fixedly  in  books,  or  floating  on  the  surface  of  society,  we 
hold  this  axiom  in  reverent  belief :  there  is  no  man  of  good 
morals  who  does  not  admire  and  esteem  the  female  charac- 
ter. Whoever  disparages  the  female  sex  is  of  necessity  a 
bad  son,  and  a  thousand  to  one  he  is,  in  his  custom  of  life, 
a  bad  member  of  society. 

Reflecting  upon  the  diverse  forms  under  which  woman 

appears  in  the  great  classic  writers  of  our  language,  we 

think  it  demonstrates  that  each  one's  individual  temper  and 

experience,  much  more  than  philosophical  observation  of 

5 


66  THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

general  fact,  have  produced  his  particular  representation  of 
her  social  destiny. 

Open,  for  instance,  the  poems  of  Pope  and  Swift,  which 
abound  with  such  coarse,  bitter,  humiliating  satire  of  the 
female  sex.  Are  all  women,  then,  without  discrimination, 
utterly  destitute  of  delicacy  and  purity  of  sentiment,  as 
those  writers  would  have  it  ?  Or  was  there  not  some  seated 
distemper  in  the  moral  constitution  of  their  minds  which 
jaundiced  all  their  views  of  woman?  The  truth  in  this 
matter  is  familiar  to  every  scholar.  They  were  each  the 
object  of  the  devoted  but  unmerited  and  unrequited  affec- 
tions of  some  of  the  best  hearts  that  ever  beat  in  human 
bosoms.  What  men  deeply  injure,  that  they  deeply  hate. 
Festering  in  misanthropical  celibacy,  the  mind  of  each 
transferred  to  the  canvas  its  own  dark  tints  of  spiteful 
malignity  in  place  of  the  reflected  image  they  professed  to 
copy.  If  we  analyze  the  life  and  character  of  Milton  and 
Byron,  we  shall  there  in  like  manner  find  a  key  to  all  the 
peculiarities  in  their  conception  of  the  social  condition  of 
woman.  There  is  one  poet  and  one  prose  writer,  however, 
each  preeminent  for  his  intuitive  perception  of  character, 
and  his  marvelous  knowledge  of  human  nature,  who  have 
written  a  vast  deal  concerning  the  female  sex,  full  of  in- 
struction, good  sense,  good  feeling  and  truth.  We  mean 
Shakespeare  and  Scott.  They  loved  fondly,  but  wisely,  and 
there  was  not,  therefore,  in  their  domestic  history,  any  great 
disturbing  fact  to  distort  their  judgment  of  the  fair  sex ;  and 
they  have  recorded  woman  as  she  is  ;  rich  in  the  virtues  and 
graces  appropriate  to  her  career  on  earth ;  if  with  less  of 
the  sustained  vigor  of  active  resolution,  and  less  of  the 
analytical  comprehensiveness  of  intellect  than  man,  yet  with 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          67 

more  intensity  of  purpose,  and  more  instinctive  quickness 
and  force  of  thought  in  a  given  emergency ;  when  good,  in 
principle  better  than  he,  when  bad,  worse;  in  a  word, 
neither  greater  nor  less  than  man,  but  different,  as  her 
natural  vocation  is  different,  and  both  so  far  equal,  that 
each  is  superior  to  the  other  in  their  respective  departments 
of  thought  and  action. 

In  taking  up  this  topic  of  the  social  condition  of  woman 
in  modern  Christendom,  we  avow  in  advance  that  we  are 
not  preparing  to  present  a  mere  panegyric  on  the  female 
sex.  What  we  propose  to  ourselves  on  this  occasion  is 
neither  a  reasoned  analysis  of  the  general  spirit  of  the  gen- 
tler sex,  nor  a  diatribe  upon  her  defects,  nor  a  declamation 
upon  her  excellences ;  but  a  just  deduction  and  estimate,  so 
far  as  we  are  able  to  give  it,  of  what  Christian  civilization 
has  done  for  the  condition  and  character  of  woman.  After 
speaking  of  the  leading  facts  of  her  history,  we  may  best 
pronounce  upon  her  true  rank  in  the  scale  of  society,  and 
of  moral  and  intellectual  beings. 

Without  covering  so  much  ground  as  would  be  needful 
were  we  to  attempt  elucidating  at  large  the  condition  of 
woman  in  societies  unconnected  with  our  own,  it  will  suffice 
if,  as  preliminary  to  considering  her  place  in  the  economy 
of  modern  Christendom,  we  briefly  explain  what  she  is  in 
countries  highly  civilized  but  not  Christian,  in  a  purely  bar- 
barous state  of  society  generally,  and  what  she  was  in  those 
communities  which  chiefly  contributed  to  form  the  spirit  of 
Christendom,  namely,  in  Palestine,  in  Greece,  in  Rome,  and 
among  the  ancient  Germans. 

Of  modern  countries  highly  civilized  but  not  Christian 
we  shall  take  but  two  examples,  China  and  Hindostan,  both 


68          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

as  composing  so  large  a  portion  of  the  human  race,  and  as 
having  really  attained  a  high  degree  of  general  culture. 

In  considering  the  purely  savage  or  hunter  stage  of 
human  society,  notwithstanding  there  be  in  different  coun- 
tries great  diversities  in  the  condition  of  the  female  sex,  yet 
in  every  case  we  discover  certain  marked  traits  which  clear- 
ly indicate  the  deleterious  effect  of  barbarism  of  manners 
upon  the  social  position  of  woman.  One  is  the  similarity 
of  savage  life,  in  the  nearest  of  all  the  social  relations,  to 
the  condition  of  brute  animals.  In  the  hunter  state  the 
supply  of  the  first  necessity  of  life,  food,  is  precarious,  and 
this  uncertainty  of  the  means  of  subsistence  counteracts  the 
natural  tendency  of  mankind  to  a  permanent  connubial 
union  between  the  sexes,  a  tendency  which  develops  itself 
more  and  more  in  proportion  as  society  grows  more  fixed 
and  stable  in  its  forms.  Hence  in  many  such  communities 
children  are  distinguished  with  reference  to  their  mother 
alone,  whose  name  they  bear,  and  not  their  father's.  In 
some  of  those  tribes  of  North  America  which  admitted  of 
hereditary  sovereignty,  royalty  of  blood  was  tested  by  deri- 
vation from  the  mother  alone,  in  reverse  of  the  usage  of 
all  civilized  nations.  Such  institutions  or  usages  necessarily 
imply  the  degradation  of  the  female  sex.  Another  of  the 
distinctive  peculiarities  of  the  savage  life  is  the  common 
fact  that  women  are  held  as  property.  In  some  barbarous 
communities  the  wife  is  purchased,  in  others  she  is  forcibly 
seized  by  her  future  husband  and  master.  And  universally 
we  may  say,  at  all  times,  in  every  climate,  under  whatever 
circumstances  of  local  situation,  savage  man  regards  and 
treats  the  feebler  sex  as  born  to  menial  service.  Woman  is 
the  humble  slave  of  his  pleasure,  the  handmaid  of  his  daily 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          69 

wants,  his  laborious  drudge  of  the  field,  the  household,  and 
the  journey,  consigned  to  toil  and  subservience,  while  he, 
the  proud  lord  of  creation,  aspires  exclusively  to  the  stirring 
chances  of  the  chase,  or  the  yet  nobler  game  of  war.  Nor 
does  this  description  apply  to  a  class  only  of  savage  society. 
Such  is  the  general  condition  of  women  in  barbarous  com- 
munities, however  exalted  the  station  of  their  rude  connec- 
tions, how  much  soever  they  happen  to  be  cherished  by 
their  untutored  lords.  Out  of  innumerable  illustrations  of 
this  which  might  be  given,  we  select  one  for  its  peculiar 
fullness,  pertinency,  and  homely  force  and  truth.  Samuel 
Hearne  is  well  known  as  one  of  the  adventurous  explorers 
of  the  Arctic  coast  of  North  America.  He  was  returning  on 
his  way  back  to  Prince  of  Wales's  Fort,  unsuccessful  from 
his  second  expedition,  when  he  met  Matonabbee,  whom  he 
describes  as  "a  powerful  and  intelligent  chief,"  and  who 
undertook  to  explain  the  cause  of  his  failure,  ascribing  it  to 
the  want  of  female  attendants.  "  In  an  expedition  of  this 
kind,"  said  Matonabbee,  "  when  all  the  men  are  so  heavily 
laden  that  they  can  neither  hunt  nor  travel  to  any  consider- 
able distance,  in  case  they  meet  with  success  in  hunting, 
who  is  to  carry  the  produce  of  their  labor  ? — Women  were 
made  for  labor ;  one  of  them  can  carry  or  haul  as  much  as 
two  men  can  do.  They  also  pitch  our  tents,  make  and 
mend  our  clothing,  rake  our  fires  at  night ;  and,  in  fact, 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  traveling  any  considerable  distance 
or  for  any  length  of  time  in  this  country  without  them ;  and 
yet,  though  they  do  everything,  they  are  maintained  at  a 
trifling  expense ;  for,  as  they  always  act  the  cook,  the  very 
licking  of  their  fingers  in  scarce  times  is  sufficient  for  their 
subsistence."  Under  the  auspices  of  Matonabbee,  and  with 


yo          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

seven  of  his  wives  to  accompany  him,  Hearne  set  out  on  his 
third  expedition ;  and  in  his  plain,  unvarnished  description 
of  the  incredible  hardships  he  underwent,  and  of  the  exces- 
sive toil  imposed  upon  the  females  of  the  expedition,  we 
have  a  vivid  representation  of  the  servile  and  wretched  con- 
dition of  the  female  sex  in  the  very  highest  rank  of  their 
nation ;  for  such  was  Matonabbee,  as  expressly  stated  by 
Hearne,  and  as  incidentally  apparent  throughout  his  narra- 
tive of  the  journey.  And  if  in  some  savage  societies  the 
condition  of  woman  was  better,  in  others  it  was  worse  than 
represented  in  the  pages  of  Hearne's  "Journey." 

While  the  people  of  Hindostan,  it  is  true,  have  made  such 
advances  in  certain  of  the  forms  and  fixed  improvements  of 
civilization,  that  they  can  not  be  deemed  a  barbarous  people, 
still  the  practice  of  infanticide  and  the  disregard  of  chastity 
are  facts  upon  the  face  of  things  attesting  a  barbaric  degra- 
dation in  the  social  position  of  woman.  Yet  there  it  is  that 
the  widow  proves  how  irreparable  is  her  grief  by  devoting 
herself  on  the  funeral  pile  as  a  burnt-offering  to  hallow  the 
memory  of  her  deceased  lord.  But  how  did  he  earn  such 
unequaled  ardor  of  love?  We  may  read  in  the  Abbe 
Dubois  an  extract  from  one  of  the  sacred  books  of  the 
Hindoos,  which  expressly  enjoins  upon  her  not  merely  that 
she  is  to  obey  her  husband  as  a  master,  but  that  she  is  to 
revere  him  as  a  god.  "  When  in  the  presence  of  her  hus- 
band," are  the  words,  "  a  woman  must  keep  her  eyes  upon 
her  master,  and  be  ready  to  receive  his  commands.  When 
he  speaks  she  must  be  quiet,  and  listen  to  nothing  besides. 
When  he  calls  she  must  leave  everything  else  and  attend 
upon  him  alone.  A  woman  has  no  other  god  on  earth  than 
her  husband.  The  most  excellent  of  all  good  works  she 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          7i 

can  perform  is  to  gratify  him  with  the  strictest  obedience. 
This  should  be  her  only  devotion.  Though  he  be  aged,  in- 
firm, dissipated,  drunkard,  or  a  debauchee,  she  must  still 
regard  him  as  her  god."  Such  is  the  text.  And  these  pre- 
cepts, it  is  notorious,  are  practically  observed  in  the  domestic 
intercourse  of  the  Hindoos. 

Nor  is  the  state  of  things  any  better  in  China,  as  is  well 
stated  in,  if  we  remember  rightly,  Morrison's  authentic  trans- 
lation of  "  The  She-king  " :  "  In  childhood  slighted,  in  maid- 
enhood sold,  in  mature  womanhood  shackled  by  the  laws 
which  prescribe  numerous  and  unpleasing  duties,  or  rather 
tasks,  to  their  husband's  relations — in  widowhood  controlled 
by  their  own  sons,  in  all  ages  and  states  considered  as  im- 
measurably inferior  to  men,  denied  even  moral  agency  in  the 
power  of  doing  either  good  or  evil — woman  is  considered  by 
the  laws  of  the  country  as  the  bond  and  appointed  slave  of 
man  and  nature,  made  such  by  the  same  law  that  gives  to 
the  sun  its  light  and  to  the  leopard  its  spots ;  and  they  find 
their  fate  but  slightly  modified' by  the  opinions  and  practices 
of  their  husbands  and  fathers."  No  addition  of  ours  to  this 
comprehensive  description  of  the  social  condition  of  woman 
in  cultivated  and  lettered  China  could  augment  its  graphic 
force. 

The  Christian  religion  issued  out  of  Judea ;  and  our 
opinions,  especially  in  Protestant  countries  where  the  Bible 
is  so  universally  read,  expounded,  and  reverenced,  are  greatly 
influenced  by  the  Old  Testament,  that  is,  the  inspired  his- 
tory, laws,  poetry,  prophecies,  and  moral  disquisitions  of  the 
Jews,  which  are  incorporated  into  our  literature  and  bias  all 
our  trains  of  thought.  Society,  as  represented  in  the  Bible, 
had  already  emerged  from  the  barbarism  of  the  hunter  state, 


f2          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

and  presents  itself  in  the  three  successive  stages  of  the  pas- 
toral, the  agricultural,  and  the  commercial  and  manufacturing 
states,  each  being  superior  in  civilization  to  its  predecessor. 
Substantially  the  same  system  of  legislation,  however,  regu- 
lated the  whole  period  of  time,  from  the  age  of  the  patri- 
archs, or  at  least  from  the  exodus  out  of  Egypt,  down  to  the 
advent  of  our  Saviour.     And  it  was  not  such  as  favored  the 
condition  of  the  female  sex ;  for  polygamy  obtained,  as  in 
other  Oriental  countries,  and  women  were  entirely  depen- 
dent upon  the  men,  who  might  repudiate  them  at  will  and 
without   cause.     Such   laws  could  not   be  otherwise   than 
decisive   of  their   general  condition  ,    and  a  careful  study 
of  particular   facts  will  bring  the  mind  to  the  same  con- 
clusion which  a  consideration  of  those  laws  would  lead  us 
to  draw.     The  persevering  attachment  of  Jacob  for  Rachel 
shows  that  in  the  patriarchal  age  woman  had  acquired  a 
value  unknown  to  the  hunter-life ;  but  all  the  circumstances 
of  their  domestic  history,  so  distinctly  told  by  the  sacred 
penman,  show  at  the  same  time  that  their  love  was  destitute 
of  the  delicacy  and  individuality  essential  to  the  true  re- 
spectability of  woman.     Again,  it  is  observable  that  Sarah, 
Rebekah,  Zipporah,  Ruth,  Tamar,  the  wives  and  daughters 
of  rich  men  and  princes,  appear  before  us  continually  in  the 
performance  of  menial  services,  or  humbly  uniting  in  the 
pleasures  of  their  lords,  not  as  with  us  the  cherished  objects 
of  respectful  affection  and  equal  observance.     And  the  re- 
markable incidents,  which  wellnigh  occasioned  the  annihila- 
tion of  the  tribe  of  Benjamin,  as  related  in  the  book  of 
Judges,  when  the  man  of  Gibeah,  instead  of  contending  to 
the  death  as  we  should  have  done  in  defense  of  the  females 
of  his  family,  offered  them  as  a  sacrifice  to  purchase  the 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN,          ?3 

safety  of  his  guest,  are  characteristic  of  the  contemporary 
estimation  of  woman.  To  be  sure,  her  condition  improved 
along  with  the  introduction  of  arts  and  manufactures  into 
the  country ;  and  what  it  was  in  the  Augustan  age  of  Judea 
we  see  plainly  in  Solomon's  description  of  a  good  wife : 
"  She  maketh  herself  coverings  of  tapestry ;  her  clothing  is 
silk  and  purple.  She  maketh  fine  linen  and  selleth  it,  and 
delivereth  girdles  unto  the  merchant.  She  openeth  her 
mouth  with  wisdom,  and  in  her  tongue  is  the  law  of  kind- 
ness. She  looketh  well  to  the  ways  of  her  household,  and 
eateth  not  the  bread  of  idleness."  Such,  therefore,  was  the 
model  of  a  perfect  woman  at  the  highest  point  of  civilization 
among  the  Jews — a  laborious  artisan,  a  discreet  housewife, 
and  withal  one  amiable  and  judicious  in  her  deportment 
and  conversation.  At  the  same  time,  even  at  this  period, 
there  is  no  social  equality,  no  intellectual  refinement,  in  the 
comparative  condition  of  the  female  sex;  it  is  that  of  an 
Asiatic  laboring  under  the  disabilities  of  polygamy,  just  as 
in  the  Syria  of  our  own  day. 

Pass  to  the  Greeks,  to  a  European  population,  though  in 
and  upon  the  confines  of  Asia.  We  know  little  of  the  heroic 
age  of  Greece ;  but  that  little  exhibits  a  manifest  social  su- 
periority of  woman  over  what  she  was  in  Judea,  because 
polygamy,  with  all  its  train  of  attendant  ills,  disappears.  It 
is  said  in  the  Iliad  of  bad  men,  that  they  deserve  not  to  en- 
joy the  rights  of  a  citizen,  nor  the  happiness  of  domestic 
life  ;  and,  as  to  be  out  of  the  pale  of  citizenship  was  to  be 
an  outlaw,  we  may  judge,  by  the  coupling  of  it  with  domes- 
ticity in  the  poet's  mind,  how  much  woman  had  begun  to  be 
prized.  And  we  think  the  fact  that  in  primitive  Greece  so 
many  women  were  deified,  and  the  female  deities,  as  Rhea, 


74          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

Juno,  Proserpina,  Venus,  Minerva,  held  in  at  least  equal 
veneration  with  the  male  ones,  testifies  that  some  imperfect 
glimpse  of  the  true  destiny  of  woman  was  dawning  out  upon 
the  age.  To  this  hour,  Andromache  and  Penelope  are  beau- 
tiful examples  of  conjugal  truth  and  virtue.  On  the  other 
hand,  so  many  women,  who  attained  a  bad  eminence  by 
their  vices — Medea,  Phaedra,  Helen,  Clytemnestra — do  yet 
attest  the  growing  personal  consequence  of  the  sex,  in  this 
the  cradle  of  the  intellect  and  civilization  of  Europe. 

Two  republics,  contrasted  in  all  their  institutions,  stood 
at  the  head  of  the  Greeks.  In  Sparta,  everything  was  forced, 
artificial,  unnatural ;  in  Athens,  the  finely  organized  Hellenic 
mind,  enamored  of  taste,  beauty,  and  refinement,  had  free 
scope  in  the  following  of  its  native  bent.  Lycurgus  im- 
pressed on  the  women  of  Sparta  a  character  of  hardness  and 
exclusive  devotion  to  the  military  success  of  the  republic,  at 
the  expense  of  every  feminine  quality.  To  wrestle  in  the 
Palaestra  promiscuously  with  men,  and  half  naked  ;  not  to 
know  or  conceive  that  which  is  the  most  indispensable,  and 
yet  the  first  and  lowest  of  the  virtues  of  a  wife ;  to  rejoice 
over  the  death  of  a  son  in  the  wars ;  to  practice  the  crime 
of  infanticide  as  a  matter  of  course,  if  a  child  seemed  to  be 
of  feeble  structure — such  was  the  education,  such  the  char- 
acter, such  the  habits  of  the  women  of  Lacedaemon.  Not 
so  in  civilized  Attica.  There  a  singular  state  of  things  en- 
sued, from  the  keen  sense  which  the  cultivated  Athenians 
felt  of  the  value  of  intellectual  female  society,  acting  upon 
their  peculiar  domestic  institutions.  Usage,  more  despotic 
and  more  tyrannical  than  law,  exacted  of  matrons  and  other 
ingenuous  women  a  life  of  extreme  seclusion.  To  live  in 
society,  to  cultivate  the  exquisite  social  arts  which  give  in- 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 


75 


tellectual  interest  to  the  female  sex,  was  to  overstep  those 
conventional  boundaries  of  virtue  which  admitted  of  no  re- 
turn. Hence,  although  in  Attica  and  other  parts  of  Greece 
of  congenial  manners,  highly  accomplished  women  existed, 
and  held  a  preeminently  brilliant  position  in  society,  cele- 
brated by  poetic  and  mimetic  art,  courted  by  philosophers, 
and  enriched  by  princes  —  Sappho,  the  poetess,  Leaena, 
famed  for  her  constancy  to  the  slayers  of  the  Pisistratidse — 
Aspasia,  at  once  a  Ninon  de  1'Enclos  to  Socrates,  and  a 
Maintenon  to  Pericles — Lais,  the  glory  and  the  shame  of  Cor- 
inth— Phryne,  who  offered  to  rebuild  Thebes  at  her  own 
charge,  and  who  could  boast  of  a  golden  image  erected  to 
her  honor  in  the  temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi — yet  all  these 
were  public  wantons,  who  usurped  among  the  spiritual  and 
beauty-loving  Greeks  that  estimation  which  is  the  rightful 
due  of  purity  and  virtue  alone,  and  which  degraded  irrepa- 
rably, while  it  seemed  the  most  to  honor,  the  nicely  consti- 
tuted character  of  woman.  x 

Proceed  now  to  Italy,  and  raise  the  veil  from  the  domestic 
sanctuary  of  the  Romans.  There  is  nothing  more  striking 
all  through  the  history  of  the  kings  and  of  the  early  republic 
than  the  new  aspect  under  which  woman  presents  herself,  so 
different  from  anything  in  Greece.  The  Roman  matron 
possessed  the  patriotism  of  the  Spartan  without  her  cruelty 
and  coarseness,  and  the  purity  of  the  Athenian  without  her 
extreme  seclusion ;  she  fell  short  of  the  modern  European 
in  that  intellectual  refinement  and  high  accomplishment 
which,  combined  with  virtue,  belong  exclusively  to  Christen- 
dom. Her  occupations  for  a  long  period  were  such  as  to 
imply  inferiority  of  condition.  Thus,  when  the  Sabines 
made  peace  with  the  Romans  at  the  conclusion  of  the  war 


76          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

occasioned  by  the  forcible  abduction  of  the  Sabine  maidens, 
it  was  stipulated  that  no  labor  should  be  exacted  of  the  latter 
except  spinning.*  Hence  an  old  writer,  who  enumerates  the 
qualities  of  a  good  wife,  to  probity,  beauty,  fidelity,  and 
chastity,  a.dds  skill  in  spinning.  Nay,  the  Emperor  Augustus 
seldom  wore  any  apparel  but  of  the  manufacture  of  his  wife, 
daughter,  and  the  ladies  of  his  household.! 

What  originally  gave  consequence  to  the  female  sex  in 
Rome  was  the  necessity  of  seeking  them,  under  which  the 
infant  people  of  Romulus  labored.  Thereafter  we  perceive, 
in  the  important  part  played  by  individual  women,  what  was 
the  general  consequence  of  the  sex.  Hersilia,  with  her 
fellow  matrons,  reconciled  the  Sabines  to  the  city  of  her 
forced  adoption;  the  crime  of  Tarquin  gave  birth  to  the 
republic ;  the  death  of  Virginia  destroyed  the  tyranny  of 
the  Decemvirs ;  Veturia  rescued  Rome  from  the  wrath  of 
Coriolanus;  when  Brennus  held  the  city  at  ransom,  the 
Roman  ladies  stripped  themselves  of  their  gold  and  jewels 
for  the  service  of  the  republic,  as  they  did  in  the  equally 
desperate  crisis  of  the  battle  of  Cannae.  And  where  such  a 
spirit  earned  to  women  such  an  estimation,  it  is  not  strange 
that  it  became  lawful  to  praise  them  in  the  tribune,  to  pro- 
nounce eulogies  to  their  memory,  and  to  draw  them  in 
chariots  to  the  public  games ;  nor  that  we  see  in  Rome  at 
this  time,  instead  of  the  corruption  of  the  Paphian  Venus, 
temples  to  Female  Fortune,  and  the  sacred  fire  of  the  re- 
public consigned  in  custody  to  the  virgin  priestess  of  the 
spotless  Vesta. 

In  the  decay  of  the  republic,  and  the  still  deeper  abase- 


Plutarch's  Romulus.  f  Sueton,  August.  73. 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          77 

ment  of  the  empire,  as  the  female  sex  still  continues  an  im- 
portant element  of  society,  this  consequence  follows.  Fre- 
quent examples  of  eminent  female  excellence  occur,  con- 
trasted with  cases  of  equally  eminent  infamy.  If  Cornelia 
could  inspire  the  Gracchi,  and  Julia  sustain  the  fortunes  of 
Pompey,  and  another  Cornelia  nobly  share  them  for  better 
and  for  worse,  and  Atia  form  the  genius  of  Octavius,  and 
Portia  approve  herself  worthy  to  be  the  wife  of  Brutus,  yet 
in  the  same  age  Metella  could  dishonor  the  household  of 
Sylla,  and  Catiline  and  Clodius  range  at  will  among  the  best 
in  blood  and  highest  in  rank  of  the  patrician  wives  of 
Rome.  So,  in  the  next  generation,  we  have  a  Julia  Augusta, 
and  a  Messalina  steeped  in  the  very  lees  of  vice,  by  the  side 
of  an  Agrippina  at  the  pinnacle  of  dignity  and  faith.  And 
when  the  profligacy  of  imperial  Rome  had  sunk  to  a  depth 
of  abomination  which  no  modern  tongue  can  express,  nor 
any  modern  mind  well  conceive,  there  were  two  Arrias,  a 
Paulina,  and  an  Eponina,  who  recalled  the  ancient  glory  of 
the  best  matrons  of  the  republic.  But  there  needed  a  new 
dispensation  of  religion  for  the  moral  reform  of  society  in 
the  days  of  the  empire;  nor  that  only,  since  the  whole 
frame  of  society  was  corrupt ;  and  nothing  less  than  a  dis- 
pensation of  blood  and  fire  could  suffice  to  work  its  physi- 
cal renovation.  Long  before  the  overthrow  of  the  empire, 
indeed,  Christianity  had  begun  to  make  its  benign  influ- 
ences felt  in  the  condition  and  character  of  woman ;  but  as 
its  operation  covered  a  later  period,  and  chiefly  in  that  was 
active  upon  the  present  civilization  of  modern  Europe,  be- 
fore entering  upon  it  we  subjoin  a  few  words  on  the  social 
standing  of  the  female  sex  among  the  invading  Germans. 
For,  while  our  religion  is  derived  from  Judea,  and  our  intel- 


7 8          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

lectual  tastes  from  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  the  basis  of  our 
manners  descends  to  us  from  the  Saxons,  Franks,  and  other 
tribes  of  the  German  race,  who  overturned  the  Roman  Em- 
pire and  established  themselves  upon  its  ruins. 

Our  most  authentic  knowledge  of  this  great  primitive 
state  of  modern  Europe  is  derived  from  the  works  of  Caesar 
and  Tacitus.  The  picture  which  these  authors  present  to 
us  displays  in  part  the  usual  features  of  savage  life,  in  part 
others  of  a  better  aspect  and  higher  promise.  Among  the 
ancient  Germans,  as  in  other  like  conditions  of  society,  all 
agricultural  as  well  as  household  labor  was  devolved  upon 
their  women,  and  the  infirm  or  less  respected  male  mem- 
bers of  the  community.  In  Gaul,  the  husband  possessed 
the  power  of  life  and  death  over  his  wife.  But  in  Britain, 
and  especially  Germany,  it  seems  to  have  been  otherwise ; 
or  at  least,  if  such  were  the  legal  power  of  the  husband,  yet 
custom  had  established  more  of  practical  equality  between 
the  sexes  than  obtained  in  Palestine,  in  Greece,  or  even  in 
Rome.  The  Germans,  above  all  other  barbarians,  held  in 
special  regard  the  singleness  of  the  connubial  relation,  and 
the  purity  of  the  female  character.  They  married  by  the 
interchange  of  gifts  in  cattle  and  arms ;  for  the  wife,  says 
Tacitus,  that  she  may  not  imagine  herself  beyond  the 
thought  of  virtue  or  the  vicissitudes  of  war,  is  admonished, 
by  the  very  auspices  of  incipient  matrimony,  that  she  comes 
to  be  the  associate  of  her  husband's  toils  and  dangers,  the 
same  to  suffer  and  the  same  to  dare,  whether  in  peace  or  in 
battle.  But  there  is  a  still  clearer  manifestation,  in  another 
place,  of  our  own  modern  spirit  of  chivalrous  admiration  of 
the  sex,  animating  the  rude  hearts  of  these  wild  hunters 
of  the  north.  The  Germans  fought  their  battles  with  their 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          79 

wives  and  families  near  at  hand.  These,  continues  Tacitus, 
are  the  sacredest  witnesses  of  martial  prowess,  these  its  loud- 
est applauders.  Each  one  carries  his  wounds  to  his  mother, 
to  his  wife ;  nor  do  these  shrink  from  numbering  or  exacting 
them ;  and  they  administer  food  and  exhortation  to  the  com- 
batants. It  is  had  in  remembrance  that  their  line  of  battle, 
when  already  bent  and  broken,  has  been  restored  by  their 
women,  with  constancy  of  prayers  and  bared  bosoms,  and 
warnings  of  coming  captivity,  which  they  dread  far  more  in- 
tolerably on  account  of  their  female  connections.  Where- 
fore, the  more  effectually  to  insure  the  execution  of  treaties, 
noble  virgins  are  demanded  as  hostages  to  bind  the  public 
faith.  For  they  think  there  is  something  holy  and  foresee- 
ing in  the  mind  of  woman  ;  for  which  reason  they  neither 
despise  her  counsels  nor  neglect  her  answers.  Under  Ves- 
pasian, we  have  seen  Veleda,  as  formerly  Aurinia  and  others, 
held  by  them  in  deep  reverence,  not  with  adulation,  nor  as 
goddesses,  and  yet  withal  as  persons  endued  with  special  au- 
thority and  wisdom.  Is  not  all  this  finely  conceived ;  and 
an  omen  of  what  woman  is  to  be,  when  these  uncultivated 
barbarians  shall  have  been  exalted,  by  religious  and  intel- 
lectual teaching,  into  civilized  Christians  ? 

In  considering  this  point,  of  the  particular  influence  of 
Christianity  upon  the  condition  of  woman,  there  is  a  mate- 
rial distinction  important  to  be  noted.  Certain  effects  are 
often  described  as  evidently  flowing  from  the  tenets  and 
general  spirit  of  our  religion,  although  not  directly  and  spe- 
cifically aimed  at  by  express  inculcation  of  the  gospel.  For 
instance,  submission  to  existing  political  institutions  is  com- 
manded, notwithstanding  the  corruptions  of  the  empire 
would  seem  to  have  been  such  as  to  justify,  nay,  to  require 


8o          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

revolution  for  their  reform.  And  yet  nothing  is  clearer  than 
that  the  general  tendency  of  the  doctrines  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament is  to  further  republican  equality.  It  is  a  religion  for 
the  universal  human  race.  It  associates  sovereign  and  sub- 
ject in  the  same  service  of  religion  upon  earth ;  it  ushers 
them  into  equal  responsibility  in  heaven  for  good  done  or 
evil  prevented,  or  the  reverse,  in  the  passages  of  this  sub- 
lunary life  of  probation.  It  is  emphatically  a  leveling  re- 
ligion, and  of  the  right  kind,  for  it  levels  upward  ;  elevating 
all  men  to  the  same  high  standard  of  sanctity,  faith,  and 
spiritual  promise  on  earth  as  in  heaven.  Just  so  it  is  that, 
wherever  Christianity  is  taught,  it  inevitably  dignifies  and 
exalts  the  female  character.  Throughout  the  New  Testa- 
ment she  is  contemplated  as  a  spiritual  and  immortal  being, 
the  equal  partaker  with  man  of  all  the  offices  of  religion 
here,  and  of  all  its  divine  aspirations  hereafter.  We  listen 
to  prayer  and  exhortation  within  the  same  holy  walls  of 
God's  temples ;  we  kneel  in  supplication  to  the  same  con- 
secrated altar  ;  children  are  admitted  into  the  visible  Church 
of  Christ  at  the  same  baptismal  font ;  we  mutually  plight  our 
faith  under  the  solemn  sanction  and  observances  of  a  com- 
mon religion ;  and,  when  the  dearest  bonds  of  blood  or 
affection  are  sundered  by  death,  there  is  left  us  the  one  ad- 
mirable solace  of  sorrow,  that  the  sainted  spirit  of  the  wife, 
sister,  daughter,  we  may  have  lost,  has  winged  its  flight  up- 
ward to  rest  for  ever  in  the  bosom  of  the  Christian's  God. 

We  familiarly  know  how  different  in  this  relation  are  the 
opinions  and  feelings  of  that  religion  which,  in  its  single 
adoration  of  one  overruling  God,  as  in  its  respect  for  Moses 
and  for  Jesus  Christ,  approaches  nearer  Christianity  than 
the  old  pagan  system  of  polytheism.  There  is  much  con- 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          81 

troversy  as  to  whether  Mohammed  did  or  did  not  teach  that 
women  have  no  souls.  We  have  not  examined  the  Koran 
with  reference  to  the  question ;  but  an  author,  whose  learn- 
ing, judgment,  and  good  faith  are  worthy  of  all  confidence, 
Father  Feijoo,  in  his  elaborate  defense  of  women,  says  he 
carefully  perused  it  in  the  sole  view  to  ascertain  the  point ; 
and  the  Koran  is  in  fact  silent  on  the  subject.  And  the  in- 
tellectual, or  rather  spiritual  degradation  of  woman,  in  the 
countries  of  the  Mohammedan  law,  is  deduced  from  this 
silence  more  than  from  any  positive  text ;  and  has  a  deeper 
foundation  than  text  or  doctrine,  in  the  practice  of  polyga- 
my, and  the  prevalence  of  purchased  connection,  the  stand- 
ing curse  of  society  in  the  luxurious  climate  of  the  Levant. 
Nay,  the  propagation  of  the  sanguinary  fanaticism  of  Mo- 
hammed and  his  disciples,  in  regions  once  occupied  by  Chris- 
tianity, may  be  partly  ascribed  to  the  important  difference 
between  the  two  religions,  and  the  superior  correspondence 
of  Islamism  to  the  settled  moral  and  social  debasement  of 
Asia  in  respect  of  woman.  A  curious  and  interesting  illus- 
tration of  this  occurs  in  the  case  of  Spain,  when  the  occa- 
sional intermarriages  of  Christian  with  Mohammedan,  and  the 
intermixture  of  the  Arabs  and  Goths  by  reason  of  the  con- 
quests made  by  each  in  the  territory  of  the  other,  and  the  fre- 
quent residence  or  visits  of  Christians  at  the  Moorish  courts 
of  Saragossa,  Cordova,  Seville,  or  Granada,  and  of  Moors 
in  the  Christian  cities  of  Leon  and  Castile,  visibly  modified 
the  manners  of  each  nation,  communicating  to  the  Goths 
something  of  the  Asiatic  averseness  to  female  independence, 
and  to  the  Spanish  Mohammedan  something  of  the  chivalry 
and  courtesy  of  the  modern  inhabitants  of  Christian  Europe. 

What  we  have  thus  reasoned  of  the  influence  of  Chris- 
6 


82          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

tianity  applies  to  all  its  forms,  and  to  the  institution  itself 
as  we  are  the  witnesses  of  its  operations  in  modern  times 
and  in  the  Protestant  countries  of  Europe  or  America. 
But,  in  the  early  ages,  when  Christianity  first  impressed  it- 
self upon  European  society,  other  religious  causes  besides 
the  essential  doctrine  of  the  Christian  faith  aided  it  in  the 
noble  work  of  elevating  the  social  condition  of  woman. 

Whoever  is  personally  acquainted  with  the  usages  of 
society  in  the  countries  of  the  Roman  Catholic  and  Greek 
faith,  which  compose  the  larger  part  of  both  Europe  and 
America,  can  not  fail  to  be  struck  with  the  reverence  there 
paid  to  females  of  sainted  memory,  martyrs  of  old  who  have 
been  canonized  for  their  devotedness  to  Christianity,  or  the 
Virgin  Mary  and  other  females  consecrated  in  the  New 
Testament.  The  Virgin  is,  perhaps,  in  all  those  countries, 
a  more  constant  object  of  address  for  interest  or  protection 
than  even  our  Saviour  himself;  so  much  so,  that  this  very 
fact  is  among  Protestants  a  common  article  of  reproach 
against  Greek  and  Roman  Catholic  Christians.  In  coun- 
tries dependent  upon  the  See  of  Rome,  while  the  veneration 
of  the  Virgin  Mother  is  not  less  intense  than  it  is  in  Greece 
or  in  Russia,  the  veneration  of  other  sainted  females  is 
more  universal.  Their  images  and  their  pictures  every- 
where meet  the  eye ;  their  festivals  are  of  continual  recur- 
rence ;  churches  and  shrines  are  dedicated  to  their  mem- 
ory; their  names  are  perpetually  upon  the  lip  in  every  hour 
of  business  or  pleasure ;  children  receive  their  names,  and 
learn  to  regard  them  through  life  as  their  special  interces- 
sors in  all  seasons  of  doubt  or  peril  for  the  mercy  and  favor 
of  Heaven.  This  may  be  very  exceptionable  as  matter  of 
religious  doctrine ;  at  least  it  is  very  abhorrent  to  the  usages 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          83 

of  devout  Protestants.  Its  influence,  however,  in  the  mid- 
dle ages,  eminently  contributed  to  exalt  the  character  of 
the  female  sex.  It  habituated  and  still  habituates  all  per- 
sons of  whatever  condition  to  the  contemplation  of  feminine 
excellence  of  a  spiritual,  moral,  or  intellectual  kind,  in  con- 
tradistinction to  the  less  refined  and  ennobled  estimation 
of  woman  in  countries  out  of  the  pale  of  Christendom. 

Furthermore,  the  individuals  thus  regarded  with  a  ven- 
eration so  peculiar  as  even  to  offend  the  principles  of  Chris- 
tians professing  the  reformed  faith,  belonged  to  the  vast 
body  of  women  of  the  early  ages,  who  by  their  constancy, 
their  zeal,  their  sufferings,  their  self-sacrifice,  their  martyr- 
dom, were  living  examples  of  the  wonderful  influence  of  the 
tenets  of  Christianity  in  purifying  the  heart  and  elevating 
the  character  of  woman.  In  the  impressible  and  enthusiastic 
constitution  of  the  female  mind,  there  is  a  remarkable  apti- 
tude for  the  peculiar  doctrines  of  Christianity.  We  see  the 
readiness  of  women  in  receiving  and  their  instrumentality 
in  propagating  the  gospel  in  the  inspired  narratives  of  the 
evangelists ;  we  see  it  in  the  teachings  and  reasonings  of  the 
epistles ;  we  see  it  in  the  writings  of  the  early  fathers  of  the 
Church ;  we  see  it  in  the  innumerable  cases  of  surpassing 
magnanimity  and  fortitude  which  honor  the  female  name 
through  all  the  persecutions  of  the  pagan  emperors;  we  see 
it  in  Saint  Helena  opening  the  heart  of  Constantine,  and 
thus  making  Christianity  the  religion  of  the  empire ;  we  see 
it  in  the  conversion  of  Clovis  and  his  Franks  through  the 
pious  eloquence  of  Clotilda.  How,  indeed,  could  it  be 
otherwise  ?  What  woman  of  sense  or  sensibility  but  would 
cling  to  a  faith  which  lifted  her  from  the  humiliation  of 
long  centuries  into  her  appropriate  sphere  of  moral  dignity 


84          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

and  spiritual  value  and  influence,  and  thus  redeemed  her 
as  it  were  from  the  divine  malediction  which  fell  in  paradise 
on  our  erring  mother  Eve  ?  No  wonder  that  Christianity 
commended  itself  to  the  female  mind ;  no  wonder  that  wo- 
man was  last  at  the  cross  and  foremost  at  the  grave  ;  no 
wonder  that  persecution  did  but  prove  her  truth,  and  thus 
filled  the  Roman  and  Greek  world  with  so  many  examples 
of  female  excellence  honored  and  revered  in  the  traditions 
of  the  Church. 

One  thing  in  addition.  We  cordially  concur  with  all 
other  Protestants,  and  with  many  if  not  the  major  part  of 
Catholics,  in  the  condemnation  of  monastic  institutions; 
because  we  know  they  are  unfitted  to  the  advanced  stage  of 
our  civilization.  The  times  when  they  were  calculated  to 
be  useful  have  ceased  to  exist.  But  he  who  is  unaware  of 
the  important  uses  they  had  in  the  furtherance  of  intelli- 
gence, religion,  and  moral  purity  in  the  middle  ages,  must 
be  untaught  in  the  lessons  of  history.  In  the  first  place, 
they  were  the  sole  repositories  of  knowledge  and  religion  in 
those  barbarous  times,  standing  like  oases  in  the  midst  of 
the  desert,  green  spots  of  earth  environed  with  desolation 
and  corruption.  In  the  second  place,  they  were  sources  of 
moral  influence  particularly  beneficial  to  the  dignity  of  the 
female  sex  ;  for  the  inculcation  of  moral  purity  among 
the  monastic  orders,  and  the  professed  and  apparent  if 
not  real  exercise  of  it,  had  an  astonishing  effect  upon  the 
imagination  and  actions  of  the  wild  conquerors  of  Europe. 
Finally,  they  were  the  asylum  and  refuge  of  the  oppressed, 
the  destitute,  the  mourner,  the  thousands  left  unfriended 
and  unhappy  by  the  violence  of  the  age,  or  unwilling  to 
dare  its  dangers.  Doubtless,  crime  and  sin  made  their  way 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.         85 

into  the  convents,  as  into  everything  human;  but  we  are 
slow  to  believe  that  corruption  ever  came  to  pervade  and 
permanently  qualify  those  abodes  of  the  vowed  servants  of 
Christ.  We  do  injustice  to  religion  in  itself  in  supposing 
there  is  no  truth  or  reality  in  the  profession  of  moral  recti- 
tude. In  fact,  a  large  part  of  the  reproachful  matter  cur- 
rent on  this  point  comes  from  the  pen  of  M.  de  Potter, 
a  systematic  and  inveterate  foe  of  the  very  institution  of 
Christianity.  And  his  great  object  in  collecting  it  avow- 
edly was,  to  serve  the  cause  of  irreligion.  At  any  rate, 
believing  or  admitting  whatever  we  will  of  the  alleged  cor- 
ruptions of  the  monastic  institution,  its  beneficial  influence 
on  the  character  and  condition  of  woman  at  the  period 
when  European  society  settled  into  its  present  forms,  is  a 
demonstrable  fact  in  the  history  of  Christendom. 

Christianity,  therefore,  proved  infinitely  efficacious  in 
elevating  the  character  and  condition  of  woman.  It  began 
to  work  out  this  effect  even  amid  all  the  corruption  of  the 
declining  period  of  the  Roman  Empire.  And  its  beneficial 
operation  was  yet  more  discernible  in  the  sequel,  when  it 
came  to  cooperate  with  some  remarkable  peculiarities  in  the 
secular  institutions  founded  by  the  new  masters  of  Europe. 
For  the  barbarians,  destructively  as  they  pursued  their 
career  of  conquest,  yet  brought  along  with  them  the  germ 
of  many  things  which  constitute  with  good  reason  the  boast 
and  pride  of  modern  times.  What  they  did  toward  the  cul- 
tivation of  woman  would  suffice  to  recompense  humanity 
for  much  of  the  desolation  and  misery  which,  in  the  long 
interval  between  their  fierce  eruptions  from  the  North  and 
the  renovation  of  civilized  life,  they  inflicted  on  the  Euro- 
pean world. 


86          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

How  it  was  that  the  feudal  system  acquired  possession 
of  Europe  belongs  not  to  the  present  subject.  Suppose  it, 
however,  to  exist  in  full  vigor,  and  let  us  see  wherein  it 
affected  the  conditioa  of  woman. 

In  comparing  the  political  institutions  of  ancient  and 
modern  Europe  with  other  great  subdivisions  of  the  human 
family,  we  observe  that  in  one  an  empire  is  split  into  frag- 
ment states,  or  smaller  states  are  united  in  a  single  empire, 
by  the  transmission  of  sovereignty  through  the  female  sex 
in  a  manner  quite  peculiar  to  Christendom.  In  the  repub- 
lics of  Greece  and  Rome  no  such  fact  occurs.  Nor  even 
in  the  time  of  the  Caesars  and  their  successors  do  we  find 
any  instance  of  sovereignty  and  territorial  power  annexed 
to  females  and  transferred  from  one  family  to  another  by 
marriage.  Among  the  Mohammedans,  also,  territorial  sove- 
reignty belongs  only  to  man.  True  it  is  that  revenues  of 
particular  cities,  islands,  or  provinces  are  specially  appropri- 
ated to  particular  female  connections  of  the  Sultan  ;  but 
these  are  held  not  in  personal  sovereignty,  transmissible 
through  the  form  of  marriage  in  succession,  but  as  a  tem- 
porary appendage  merely ;  just  as,  under  the  Persian  Em- 
pire, one  city  furnished  the  head-dress  of  the  queens,  an- 
other their  slippers,  and  a  third  their  girdle ;  *  and  as  the 
queen-consort  in  England  anciently  had  queen-gold  reserved 
to  her  out  of  the  rent  of  royal  domains  for  specified  objects 
of  apparel  and  maintenance. f  But  the  conquerors  of  Eu- 
rope introduced  laws  of  inheritance  which  had  the  effect 
either  of  making  a  woman  a  feudal  sovereign  in  her  own 
right,  or  at  least  the  medium  of  conveying  the  feudal  rights 


*  Cicero,  Orat.  in  Verrem,  1.  iii.,  c.  33. 

f  Blackstone's  Commentary,  vol.  i.,  p.  221. 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.         87 

of  her  deceased  father  to  the  person  of  her  husband.  Take 
the  feudal  law,  for  instance,  as  practiced  in  England.  For 
some  time  after  the  Conquest,  dignity  and  power  were  an- 
nexed to  the  tenure  of  lands  in  the  usual  condition  of  feu- 
dal service  rendered  by  the  holders  as  liegemen  of  the  king, 
or  vassals  of  some  intermediate  chief.  He  who  held  lands 
of  the  king  was  a  baron  of  Parliament,  the  immediate  lord 
of  tenants  holding  in  like  manner  of  him,  and  the  qualified 
sovereign  of  the  territory  constituting  his  fief  or  fiefs.  Some 
of  these  fiefs  or  estates  with  dignity  attached  were  male 
fiefs,  that  is,  limited  to  male  heirs  of  the  baron  or  knight  in 
possession ;  but  others,  and  those  not  the  least  valuable,  de- 
scended to  his  heirs  generally,  females  included  in  default 
of  male  heirs.  If  a  baron  died,  leaving  several  daughters, 
either  the  king  selected  some  one  of  them,  or  her  hus- 
band, to  be  invested  with  the  feudal  dignity ;  or  it  remained 
in  abeyance,  or  suspent,  until  by  the  extinction  of  other 
branches  there  was  but  a  single  male  heir  entitled  by  blood. 
If  there  was  but  one  daughter,  she  became  at  once  a  baron- 
ess in  her  own  right,  and  her  husband  was  the  possessor  and 
administrator  of  her  feudal  power  during  his  lifetime,  when 
it  descended  to  her  male  heirs,  with  her  nobility  and  rank, 
so  that  her  hand  conferred  or  transmitted  not  wealth  only 
but  territorial  sovereignty  and  political  distinction. 

In  some  instances,  to  be  sure,  these  institutions  operated 
hardly  upon  the  affections  of  a  woman,  by  restricting  her 
freedom  of  choice  in  the  bestowment  of  her  hand.  An 
heiress  was  the  ward  of  her  feudal  superior ;  and  his  inter- 
est, as  'the  political  chief,  was  to  be  consulted  in  the  dispo- 
sition of  her  person,  because  involving  that  of  her  estates 
and  vassals.  The  ancient  records  of  the  exchequer,  says 


88          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

Edmund  Burke,  afford  many  instances  where  some  women 
purchased  by  heavy  fines  the  privilege  of  a  single  life,  some 
the  free  choice  of  a  husband,  others  the  liberty  of  rejecting 
some  one  particularly  disagreeable.  And  there  are  not 
wanting  examples  where  a  woman,  having  offered  a  consid- 
erable fine  to  escape  marriage  with  a  certain  person,  the 
suitor  on  the  other  hand  has  outbid  her,  and  has  thus  effected 
his  object  avowedly  against  her  inclination.  Notwithstanding 
the  occurrence  of  such  abuses,  the  general  operation  of  the 
feudal  law  of  succession  was  to  augment  the  importance  and 
respectability  of  women ;  for  the  lord  depended  very  much 
upon  the  good  will  of  his  vassals ;  and  the  particular  in- 
stances of  misrule  in  question  show  that  woman  had  at  least 
a  will  to  be  consulted  and  conciliated.  And,  if  herself  a 
great  vassal,  she  exercised  a  direct  personal  power  in  pub- 
lic affairs,  which  of  necessity  made  her  to  be  feared  and  re- 
garded. In  England,  for  instance,  abbesses  attended  Par- 
liament in  person.  Lay  peeresses  did  not  appear  in  person, 
but  they  nominated  their  proxies  just  like  lay  peers ;  and  in 
the  Parliament  of  the  31  Edward  III.  it  appears  there  were 
ten  peeresses  who  thus  voted  by  proxy  among  the  great 
barons.  And,  previous  to  the  passage  of  the  Reform  Bill, 
females,  as  proprietors  of  boroughs,  could  and  did  in  various 
cases  hold  and  exercise  the  right  of  returning  members  to 
the  House  of  Commons. 

Such  was  the  principle.  And,  to  comprehend  thoroughly 
its  political  operation,  let  us  consider  it  in  the  cases  of  great 
states,  rather  than  in  the  obscurer  examples  of  subordinate 
feudal  sovereignties.  In  France,  a  peculiar  text  called  the 
Salic  law,  whose  origin  is  lost  in  the  darkness  of  the  barbar- 
ous ages,  excluded  the  female  line  from  the  throne ;  but  in 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          89 

all  the  other  great  monarchies  of  Europe,  and  even  in  the 
feudal  subdivisions  of  France  itself,  there  was  no  distinction 
in  this  respect  between  the  regal  and  any  other  dignity. 
Thus  it  happened,  by  the  marriage  of  English  princes  with 
French  heiresses,  that  Guienne,  Anjou,  and  other  provinces 
of  France  became  subject  to  England.  Nay,  the  English 
long  denied  the  force  of  the  Salic  law  itself;  in  pursuance  of 
which  Henry  V.,  like  his  predecessor,  Edward  III.,  invaded 
France,  claiming  the  crown  through  a  female,  in  preference 
to  a  male  heir  nearly  related  to  the  last  monarch ;  and  the 
kings  of  England,  until  near  to  our  own  day,  continued  to 
style  themselves  kings  of  France.  Thus,  in  process  of  time, 
some  of  the  large  French  fiefs  became  vested  in  the  crown. 
Thus  Catalonia  was  united  to  Aragon,  and  Aragon  to  Cas- 
tile. And  thus  the  grandson  of  a  Duke  of  Austria  came  to 
be  master  of  the  Netherlands,  Bohemia,  Hungary,  Germany, 
and  Spain.  To  say  nothing  of  women  who,  like  Boadicea 
of  ancient  Britain,  ascended  the  throne  themselves,  and 
either  remained  unmarried,  as  Elizabeth  Tudor,  and  Chris- 
tina of  Sweden,  or,  if  married,  yet  retained  still  the  govern- 
ment of  their  hereditary  dominions,  as  Mary  Tudor,  and 
Anne  Stuart  of  England,  Mary  of  Scotland,  Isabel  of  Castile, 
and  Maria  Theresa  of  Hungary ;  at  the  present  time,  Spain 
and  Portugal  have  youthful  queens  for  their  sovereigns,  and 
Great  Britain  will,  in  all  probability,  devolve  on  a  princess 
likewise,  through  marriage  with  whom  the  crowns  of  each  of 
those  countries  may  pass  into  a  foreign  house ;  just  in  the 
same  way  that  a  Bourbon  originally  acquired  Spain,  and  a 
Guelph  inherited  Great  Britain. 

It  requires  no  extended  argument  to  show  the  efficacy  of 
such  laws  in  imparting  personal  respectability  to  woman. 


9o          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

In  the  first  place,  the  world  saw  her  actually  possessed  of 
power,  and  invested  with  all  its  external  insignia,  its  pomp, 
and  its  imposing  circumstances.  In  the  second  place,  she 
became  an  object  of  desire  and  pursuit  to  the  other  sex,  not 
merely  because,  as  in  other  countries,  she  might  confer 
wealth  in  the  bestowment  of  her  hand,  but  because  rank, 
power,  and  sovereignty  itself  passed  by  her  to  her  husband 
and  to  her  descendants.  Proceed  we,  therefore,  to  the  social 
state  of  the  Franks  and  Normans,  so  as  to  see  what  influence 
that  had  upon  the  condition  of  woman. 

One  of  the  most  eminent  statesmen  and  profound  schol- 
ars of  our  day,  M.  Guizot,  ascribes  much  of  the  importance 
of  woman  in  the  social  relation  of  modern  Christendom  to 
the  peculiar  mode  of  life  adopted  by  the  northern  invaders 
almost  universally,  in  connection  with  or  in  consequence  of 
the  introduction  of  the  feudal  system.  Each  baron  or  land- 
holder established  himself  in  some  elevated  or  otherwise 
defensible  spot,  which  he  fortified,  constructing  there  his 
feudal  castle,  where  he  lived  in  solitary  independence.  Who 
are  the  inmates  of  his  castle  ?  His  wife,  his  children,  his 
domestics,  his  military  retainers,  perhaps  a  small  number  of 
freemen  who  have  no  lands  themselves  and  attach  them- 
selves to  his  fortune.  Around  the  foot  of  his  castle  is 
grouped  a  little  settlement,  chiefly  composed  of  serfs,  who 
cultivate  his  domain,  and  look  to  the  castle  and  its  military 
occupants  for  protection  in  all  emergencies  of  danger.  Un- 
der such  circumstances,  the  life  of  each  individual  of  ingen- 
uous condition,  except  when  he  was  engaged  in  the  chase, 
or  in  expeditions  of  war,  was  emphatically  domestic.  In 
Rome,  as  in  Greece,  the  life  of  men  was,  on  the  other  hand, 
civic.  They  dwelt  in  cities  for  the  most  part,  repairing  to 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          gi 

the  country  only  for  temporary  recreation.  The  private 
dwellings  even  of  the  wealthy  were  nowise  calculated  for 
what  we  know  as  domestic  comfort  and  enjoyment.  They 
had  sumptuous  dining  halls,  but  none  of  the  commodious 
apartments  for  retirement  and  repose,  none  of  the  bright  sa- 
loons for  conversation  and  domestic  association,  which  be- 
long to  modern  residences.  The  social  intercourse  of  men 
was  carried  on  at  the  baths,  in  the  forum,  and  under  the 
basilica,  which  decorated  every  considerable  town  or  city. 
Those  of  the  highest  rank  in  society  depended  upon  the 
good  will  and  the  votes  of  their  fellow  townsmen  for  every- 
thing which  distinguished  life,  or  made  it  useful  and  endur- 
able. Hence  the  great  Roman  statesman  would  have  his 
dwelling  so  constructed  that  all  the  citizens  of  Rome  might 
overlook  him  in  every  act  and  movement  of  his  whole  exist- 
ence ;  whereas  the  baron  of  the  middle  ages,  living  isolated, 
independent  of  the  world,  even  at  feud  with  some  of  his 
neighbors,  had  few  or  no  social  resources  except  in  the 
bosom  of  his  own  family,  or  in  the  midst  of  little  circles  of 
the  same  description,  allied  to  him  by  affinity  or  friendship. 
It  was  for  these  narrow  domestic  societies 'of  the  baronial 
hall  that  so  many  lays  of  love  and  fabliaux  of  the  wandering 
minstrels  of  that  period  were  composed,  giving  birth  to  a 
delightful  fireside  literature,  quite  unknown  to  classical  an- 
tiquity. In  such  habitudes  of  life  there  was  full  scope  for 
the  development  of  that  respectful  regard  for  the  female  sex 
which  we  have  seen  to  exist  in  the  forests  of  Germany  and 
Scandinavia. 

To  the  dignity  and  importance  of  the  female  sex,  as  pro- 
duced by  the  combination  of  circumstances  which  we  have 
described,  namely,  the  influence  of  Christianity  and  the 


92          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF   WOMAN. 

old  German  deference  for  women,  developed  in  the  pecu- 
liar social  state  of  the  feudal  masters  of  Europe,  there  came 
finally  to  be  added  the  institution  of  chivalry.  This  also 
had  its  root  in  the  military  usages  of  the  ancient  Germans  ; 
for  the  investiture  of  arms,  the  fondness  for  single  combats, 
the  painting  of  shields,  and  the  presence  of  women  at  martial 
sports  and  exercises  are  as  plainly  recorded  in  Tacitus  as  in 
Froissart  or  Saint  Palaye.  At  the  present  time  the  mind 
sees  much  that  is  exaggerated  and  extravagant  in  the  max- 
ims and  practices  of  chivalry.  Errant  knights,  roving  over 
the  country  slaying  monsters,  combating  giants  and  en- 
chanters, delivering  distressed  damsels  from  the  hands  of 
cruel  oppressors,  and  seeking  adventures  all  over  the  world, 
are  alien  to  existing  manners  and  the  fixed  civilization  of 
the  day.  So  also  are  tournaments,  jousts,  and  the  deeds  of 
steel-clad  knights  deciding  battles  by  their  single  prowess. 
Amadis  de  Gaul  would  at  this  time  be  deemed  a  worse 
madman  than  Don  Quixote  de  la  Mancha;  and  Orlando 
quite  as  furious  in  his  soberest  moments  as  when  he  split 
solid  rocks  in  twain  with  his  good  sword  for  the  jealousy  of 
the  false  traitor  Medoro.  Civilization  has  accomplished  all 
this  by  substituting  the  reign  of  law  for  that  of  violence, 
diffusing  knowledge,  and  infusing  in  society  such  notions  of 
right  and  wrong  as  do  away  with  the  vocation  of  individual 
redresses  of  injured  innocence.  And  the  invention  of  gun- 
powder, transferring  the  decision  of  battles  to  the  organized 
action  of  masses  instead  of  the  rash  prowess  of  a  few  knights 
armed  in  proof  and  riding  down  whole  battalions  of  helpless 
archers  or  billmen,  has  operated  a  similar  change  in  the  art 
of  war,  making  it  a  game  of  skill,  that  is,  of  intellect  rather 
than  of  mere  physical  force.  But  in  those  times,  when  each 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN,          93 

one  did  what  seemed  good  in  his  own  eyes,  and  when  every 
person  of  ingenuous  birth  enjoyed  the  right  of  private  war, 
there  needed  something  to  modify  and  check  the  universal 
lawlessness  of  men  and  to  protect  the  weak,  and  especially 
females,  from  being  the  victims  of  perpetual  outrage.  The 
evils  of  the  social  state  sooner  or  later  work  out  their  own 
cure.  What  the  world  fell  upon  as  a  remedy  for  the  disor- 
dered condition  of  things  which  we  have  described  was  the 
institution  of  chivalry,  consisting  in  the  voluntary  associa- 
tion of  men  as  knights  pledged  by  promises  and  solemn 
religious  sanctions  to  do  that  justice  to  each  other  and  to 
society  as  a  point  of  honor  which  the  law  of  the  land  did 
not  exact  or  had  no  means  to  enforce.  To  guard  and  pro- 
tect the  female  sex  in  that  universal  dissolution  of  society 
was  the  pressing  necessity,  and  it  became  of  course  the  first 
point  of  honor  in  the  heart  of  a  good  knight.  He  was  edu- 
cated in  the  baronial  hall  of  his  feudal  lord ;  he  waited  on 
its  mistress  as  her  page ;  he  followed  its  master  in  battle  as 
his  faithful  esquire  ;  in  the  bower  he  acquired  the  senti- 
ments and  the  language  of  courtesy,  gallantry,  and  truth  ;  in 
the  courtyard  he  trained  himself  to  the  feats  of  arms ;  in 
the  field  he  emulated  the  prowess  of  his  lord ;  and  thus  he 
grew  up  to  be  at  once  a  brave  soldier  and  a  true  gentleman. 
He  learned  to  vow  himself  to  the  cause  of  his  lady-love ;  he 
wore  her  scarf  in  the  tourney ;  he  silently  invoked  her  name 
as  he  dashed  into  the  melee  j  and  reflectively  he  respected 
the  whole  sex  through  his  admiration  of  her  whom  he  fol- 
lowed as  the  lode-star  of  his  life  and  adored  as  second  only 
to  his  God.  We  are  not  drawing  a  picture  of  imaginary 
scenes  proper  only  to  the  page  of  a  romance — it  is  the  reali- 
ty so  beautifully  described  by  Burke  :  "  That  generous  loy- 


94 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 


alty  to  rank  and  sex,  that  proud  submission,  that  dignified 
obedience,  that  subordination  of  the  heart,  which  kept  alive, 
even  in  servitude  itself,  the  spirit  of  an  exalted  freedom ; 
that  untaught  grace  of  life,  that  sensibility  of  principle,  that 
chastity  of  honor,  which  felt  a  stain  like  a  wound,  which  in- 
spired courage  while  it  mitigated  ferocity,  which  ennobled 
whatever  it  touched,  and  under  which  vice  itself  lost  half  its 
evil  by  losing  all  its  grossness."  It  is  the  reality  finely  ex- 
emplified in  the  actions  of  Edward  the  Black  Prince,  show- 
ing by  his  whole  life  that  knighthood  was  no  idle  extrava- 
gance of  the  obscure  adventurers  of  the  middle  ages  and 
the  apocryphal  romance  of  Turpin.  It  is  a  state  of  things 
which  actually  existed  from  the  time  of  Charlemagne,  or 
soon  after,  down  to  the  time  of  the  settlement  of  America, 
for  at  that  late  period  all  the  maxims  and  sports  of  chivalry 
continued  in  full  force.  France  and  Spain  were  ever  the 
nations  where  it  flourished  in  the  greatest  splendor.  And 
in  the  history  of  the  wars  waged  in  Italy  between  the  Span- 
iards and  French  during  the  reign  of  Ferdinand  and  his 
grandson  Charles  we  read  continually  of  jousts,  single  com- 
bats, extravagant  gallantry,  and  all  the  incidents  of  the  early 
days  of  chivalry.  Gonsalvo  de  Cordova,  commander  of  the 
Spanish  armies,  a  wise  and  shrewd  man  as  well  as  a  brave 
one;  Francis  of  France  himself;  and  Bayard,  chevalier  sans 
peur  et  sans  reproche,  a  great  noble  and  an  eminent  general 
officer  not  less  than  a  knight — these  were  at  the  very  head 
of  the  order,  mirrors  of  courtesy,  gallantry,  and  honor,  and 
superlatively  famous  as  such  through  all  Europe. 

Thus  have  we  explained,  as  briefly  as  we  might,  the  facts 
in  the  history  of  civilization  which  molded  the  condition 
of  woman,  and  gave  to  the  social  relations  of  the  sexes  the 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN.          95 

body  and  general  outline  which  it  wore  at  the  time  of  the 
discovery  of  America.  Since  that  period  the  social  position 
of  the  female  sex,  which  it  attained  under  the  continued 
impulse  of  Christianity  and  chivalry,  has  been  modified  by 
two  new  facts,  the  progress  of  intellectual  refinement  and 
of  the  useful  arts.  Presupposing  the  original  causes  of 
woman's  elevation  in  Christendom  to  have  had  the  effects 
ascribed,  and  then  to  have  given  a  right  impulsion  to  soci- 
ety, it  is  obvious  that  whatever  develops  mind  and  aug- 
ments its  ascendancy  in  the  world  must  add  to  the 
respectability  of  woman,  who  depends  for  her  social  rela- 
tion upon  the  moral  and  intellectual  influences  she  exerts 
over  man.  Accordingly,  though  chivalry  has  ceased  to 
exist,  yet  the  moral  dignity  and  social  equality  of  the 
female  sex  continue  to  be  distinctive  of  Christendom. 
If  a  woman  belong  to  the  industrious  walks  of  life  she 
has  a  relative  value,  enhanced  by  civilization,  in  her  apti- 
tude for  any  trade  requiring  skill,  rather  than  physical 
strength,  for  its  performance.  If  placed  by  fortune  in  a 
more  elevated  condition  of  society,  then  she  is  prompted 
and  encouraged  to  the  acquisition  and  the  display  of  intel- 
lectual qualities,  either  in  the  intercourse  of  society,  the 
duties  of  family,  or  the  cultivation  of  science  and  literature. 
To  appreciate  this  fact  we  have  only  to  compare  the  intel- 
lectual cultivation  of  celebrated  women  in  our  age  with  any 
of  the  distinguished  examples  of  it  recorded  in  other  times 
and  other  societies.  No  case  can  be  found  more  favorable 
to  the  other  side  of  the  question  than  that  of  the  Romans. 
Preeminent  in  classical  history  is  Cornelia,  the  mother  of 
the  Gracchi,  born  of  that  Cornelian  and  ^Emilian  family 
which  seemed  to  have  a  charter  of  hereditary  genius. 


96          THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

There  was  a  like  succession  of  distinguished  females  in  the 
Lselian  family,  three  generations  of  which  are  commemo- 
rated by  Cicero.  Another  Roman  lady,  Ccerellia,  is  famed  as 
having  gained  the  respect  and  society  of  Cicero  by  her  tal- 
ents and  knowledge.  What  monument  of  either  of  them 
remains  to  attest  their  intellectual  elevation  ?  Wherein  con- 
sisted their  intellectual  cultivation  ?  It  is  evident  that  they 
were  courted  and  admired,  first  for  their  good  sense,  and 
then  for  the  grace  and  elegance  of  their  conversation ;  but 
they  were  not  to  be  compared  to  any  of  the  great  female 
names  of  modern  letters,  as  for  instance  the  Edgeworths,  the 
Somervilles,  the  Martineaus,  the  Hemanses  of  our  own  living 
vernacular  literature.  In  fact,  no  Roman  authoress,  deserv- 
ing the  name,  is  handed  down  to  posterity.  The  younger 
Pliny  dwells  applaudingly  on  the  character  of  his  second 
wife,  Calpurnia;  and  his  affectionate  account  of  her  con- 
veys, we  suppose,  the  best  possible  idea  of  the  cultivation 
of  an  intellectual  Roman  wife.  "  From  attachment  to  me," 
he  says,  "  she  has  acquired  a  love  of  study.  My  books  she 
carries  with  her,  reads,  learns  by  heart.  What  solicitude  she 
testifies  when  I  am  about  to  plead  in  a  cause,  what  joy 
when  I  have  done !  She  has  messengers  disposed  to  tell 
her  what  assent,  what  applause  I  receive ;  and  what  is  the 
event  of  the  trial. '  She  sings  my  verses  to  her  lyre  with  no 
other  art  but  love,  the  best  of  masters.  Wherefore  I  enter- 
tain a  confident  hope  that  our  mutual  attachment  will  be 
perpetual  and  will  grow  stronger  and  stronger  with  time. 
For  it  is  not  my  youth  or  my  person,  which  fail  with  age, 
but  my  fame,  which  she  loves."*  Interesting  as  this  picture 

*  Plin.  Epist.,  1.  iv.,  ep.  19. 


THE  SOCIAL   CONDITION  OF   WOMAN.          97 

of  connubial  felicity  is,  they  are  moral  not  intellectual  qual- 
ities which  Pliny  praises,  and  that  of  being  an  admirer  of 
her  husband's  writings  and  talents  stands  preeminent  in  the 
catalogue.  What  inferior  female  cultivation  does  not  this 
bespeak,  compared  with  the  times  which  produced  such 
women  as  Vittoria  Colonna,  Maria  de  Padilla,  Lady  Fan- 
shawe,  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  Lady  Rachel  Russell,  Madame 
Roland,  and  Madame  Larochejaquelein,  combining  the  high- 
est excellence  in  the  relations  of  wife  and  mother,  and  intel- 
lectual traits  and  acquirements  infinitely  beyond  the  Corne- 
lias and  the  Calpurnias,  those  pattern  wives  and  mothers  of 
ancient  Rome  ! 

Before  leaving  the  subject  there  is  one  remaining  class 
of  considerations  which  we  can  not  well  omit  to  touch. 
It  may  seem  to  be  an  anomaly  of  Christian  institutions,  that 
while  women  are  admitted  by  inheritance  to  the  highest 
of  all  political  stations,  in  hereditary  monarchies  that  of 
the  throne,  they  are  excluded  from  equal  participation 
with  men  in  the  ordinary  political  privileges.  They  do  not 
vote  at  elections ;  they  do  not  sit  in  legislative  bodies  even 
where  the  right  of  membership  is  hereditary.  Such  wo- 
men as  Catharine  of  Russia,  Elizabeth  of  England,  Isa- 
bel of  Spain,  Maria  Theresa  of  Hungary,  might  justify,  it 
would  seem,  the  imposition  of  any  degree  of  political  re- 
sponsibility upon  the  female  sex.  True,  but  the  only  cases 
which  countenance  this  idea  are  of  woman  exercising  in- 
herited sovereign  power,  in  solitary  examples,  constituting 
exceptions  to  the  usual  destiny  of  the  sex,  and  these  excep- 
tions, when  analyzed,  serving  to  confirm  the  general  rule. 
They  were  not  thrown  into  the  vulgar  strife  and  competi- 
tion of  honor,  which  necessarily  pervade  the  ranks  of  ordi- 
7 


98          THE  SOCIAL  CONDITION  OF    WOMAN. 

nary  life.  They  did  not  have  to  run  the  career  of  arms  as 
the  road  to  power.  And  the  condition  of  a  great  prince 
in  the  countries  of  Christendom  is  rather  that  of  one  rep- 
resenting sovereignty  than  of  one  actually  exercising  it ; 
since  all  the  labor  and  responsibility  and  personal  danger 
devolve  on  ministers  and  generals  holding  the  delegated 
powers  of  government.  Aurelius,  it  is  said,  contemplated 
the  establishment  of  a  female  senate.  Heliogabalus  actu- 
ally did  organize  one  under  the  presidency  of  his  mother ; 
but  ^Elius  Lampridius,  who  tells  the  tale,  says  the  members 
chiefly  occupied  themselves  with  points  of  etiquette,  of 
regulation  of  dress,  and  other  like  feminine  mysteries  of 
state.  And  whether  the  story  of  the  Amazons  be  authentic 
history,  or  only  a  cunningly  devised  fable,  it  presents  at  all 
events  a  poor  picture  of  what  society  would  become  if  our 
councils  were  rilled  and  our  armies  manned  with  women, 
and  they  rather  than  men,  or  equally  with  men,  discharged 
the  external  and  political  duties  of  society,  doing  so  at  the 
sacrifice  of  all  that  delicacy  and  maternal  tenderness  which 
are  among  the  most  appropriate  and  the  highest  charms  of 
woman.  Hers  be  the  domain  of  the  moral  affections,  the 
empire  of  the  heart,  the  coequal  sovereignty  of  intellect, 
taste,  and  social  refinement ;  leave  the  rude  commerce  of 
camps  and  the  soul-hardening  struggles  of  political  power 
to  the  harsher  spirit  of  man,  that  he  may  still  look  up  to 
her  as  a  purer  and  brighter  being,  an  emanation  of  some 
better  world,  irradiating  like  a  rainbow  of  hope  the  stormy 
elements  of  life. 


JOHN  MILTON* 


THE  discovery  of  the  lost  work  of  Milton,  the  treatise 
"  Of  the  Christian  Doctrine,"  in  1823,  drew  a  sudden  at- 
tention to  his  name.  For  a  short  time  the  literary  journals 
were  filled  with  disquisitions  on  his  genius ;  new  editions 
of  his  works  and  new  compilations  of  his  life  were  pub- 
lished. But  the  new-found  book  having  in  itself  less  attrac- 
tion than  any  other  work  of  Milton,  the  curiosity  of  the 
public  as  quickly  subsided,  and  left  the  poet  to  the  enjoy- 
ment of  his  permanent  fame,  or  to  such  increase  or  abate- 
ment of  it  only  as  is  incidental  to  a  sublime  genius,  quite 
independent  of  the  momentary  challenge  of  universal  atten- 
tion to  his  claims. 

But,  if  the  new  and  temporary  renown  of  the  poet  is 
silent  again,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  he  has  gained  in 
this  age  some  increase  of  permanent  praise.  The  fame  of  a 
great  man  is  not  rigid  and  stony  like  his  bust.  It  changes 
with  time.  It  needs  time  to  give  it  due  perspective.  It 
was  very  easy  to  remark  an  altered  tone  in  the  criticism 
when  Milton .  reappeared  as  an  author,  fifteen  years  ago, 
from  any  that  had  been  bestowed  on  the  same  subject  be- 

*  The  Poetical  Works  of  John  Milton.  A  new  edition.  2  vols.,  8vo. 
Boston  :  Milliard,  Gray  &  Co.  1836. 


I00  JOHN  MILTON. 

fore.  It  implied  merit  indisputable  and  illustrious ;  yet  so 
near  to  the  modern  mind  as  to  be  still  alive  and  life-giving. 
The  aspect  of  Milton,  to  this  generation,  will  be  part  of  the 
history  of  the  nineteenth  century.  There  is  no  name  in 
literature  between  his  age  and  ours  that  rises  into  any  ap- 
proach to  his  own.  And  as  a  man's  fame,  of  course,  char- 
acterizes those  who  give  it  as  much  as  him  who  receives  it, 
the  new  criticism  indicated  a  change  in  the  public  taste, 
and  a  change  which  the  poet  himself  might  claim  to  have 
wrought. 

The  reputation  of  Milton  had  already  undergone  one  or 
two  revolutions  long  anterior  to  its  recent  aspects.  In  his 
lifetime  he  was  little  or  not  at  all  known  as  a  poet,  but  ob- 
tained great  respect  from  his  contemporaries  as  an  accom- 
plished scholar  and  a  formidable  controvertist.  His  poem 
fell  unregarded  among  his  countrymen.  His  prose  writings, 
especially  the  "  Defence  of  the  English  People,"  seem  to 
have  been  read  with  avidity.  These  tracts  are  remarkable 
compositions.  They  are  earnest,  spiritual,  rich  with  allu- 
sion, sparkling  with  innumerable  ornaments;  but  as  writ- 
ings designed  to  gain  a  practical  point  they  fail.  They  are 
not  effective  like  similar  productions  of  Swift  and  Burke ; 
or,  like  what  became  also  controversial  tracts,  several  mas- 
terly speeches  in  the  history  of  the  American  Congress. 
Milton  seldom  deigns  a  glance  at  the  obstacles  that  are  to 
be  overcome  before  that  which  he  proposes  can  be  done. 
There  is  no  attempt  to  conciliate — no  mediate,  no  prepara- 
tory course  suggested — but,  peremptory  and  impassioned, 
he  demands  on  the  instant  an  ideal  justice.  Therein  they 
are  discriminated  from  modern  writings,  in  which  a  regard 
to  the  actual  is  all  but  universal. 


JOHN  MILTON.  IOi 

Their  rhetorical  excellence  must  also  suffer  some  deduc- 
tion. They  have  no  perfectness.  These  writings  are  won- 
derful for  the  truth,  the  learning,  the  subtilty  and  pomp  of 
the  language ;  but  the  whole  is  sacrificed  to  the  particular. 
Eager  to  do  fit  justice  to  each  thought,  he  does  not  subor- 
dinate it  so  as  to  project  the  main  argument.  He  writes 
while  he  is  heated ;  the  piece  shows  all  the  rambles  and 
resources  of  indignation ;  but  he  has  never  integrated  the 
parts  of  the  argument  in  his  mind.  The  reader  is  fatigued 
with  admiration,  but  is  not  yet  master  of  the  subject. 

Two  of  his  pieces  may  be  excepted  from  this  description, 
one  for  its  faults,  the  other  for  its  excellence.  The  "  De- 
fence of  the  People  of  England,"  on  which  his  contempora- 
ry fame  was  founded,  is,  when  divested  of  its  pure  Latinity, 
the  worst  of  his  works.  Only  its  general  aim  and  a  few 
elevated  passages  can  save  it.  We  could  be  well  content  if 
the  flames  to  which  it  was  condemned  at  Paris,  at  Toulouse, 
and  at  London,  had  utterly  consumed  it.  The  lover  of  his 
genius  will  always  regret  that  he  should  not  have  taken 
counsel  of  his  own  lofty  heart  at  this,  as  at  other  times,  and 
have  written  from  the  deep  convictions  of  love  and  right 
which  are  the  foundations  of  civil  liberty.  There  is  little 
poetry  or  prophecy  in  this  mean  and  ribald  scolding.  To 
insult  Salmasius,  not  to  acquit  England,  is  the  main  design. 
What  under  heaven  had  Madame  de  Saumaise,  or  the  man- 
ner of  living  of  Saumaise,  or  Salmasius,  or  his  blunders  of 
grammar,  or  his  niceties  of  diction,  to  do  with  the  solemn 
question  whether  Charles  Stuart  had  been  rightly  slain? 
Though  it  evinces  learning  and  critical  skill,  yet,  as  an  his- 
torical argument,  it  can  not  be  valued  with  similar  disquisi- 
tions of  Robertson  and  Hallam,  and  even  less  celebrated 


102  JOHN  MILTON. 

scholars.  But,  when  he  comes  to  speak  of  the  reason  of  the 
thing,  then  he  always  recovers  himself.  The  voice  of  the 
mob  is  silent,  and  Milton  speaks.  And  the  peroration  in 
which  he  implores  his  countrymen  to  refute  this  adversary 
by  their  great  deeds  is  in  a  just  spirit.  The  other  piece  is 
his  "  Areopagitica,"  the  discourse  addressed  to  the  Parlia- 
ment in  favor  of  removing  the  censorship  of  the  press — the 
most  splendid  of  his  prose  works.  It  is,  as  Luther  said  of 
one  of  Melanchthon's  writings,  "  alive,  hath  hands  and  feet 
— and  not  like  Erasmus's  sentences,  which  were  made,  not 
grown."  The  weight  of  the  thought  is  equaled  by  the  vi- 
vacity of  the  expression,  and  it  cheers  as  well  as  teaches. 
This  tract  is  far  the  best  known  and  the  most  read  of  all, 
and  is  still  a  magazine  of  reasons  for  the  freedom  of  the 
press.  It  is  valuable  in  history  as  an  argument  addressed 
to  a  government  to  produce  a  practical  end,  and  plainly 
presupposes  a  very  peculiar  state  of  society. 

But  deeply  as  that  peculiar  state  of  society,  in  which 
and  for  which  Milton  wrote,  has  engraved  itself  in  the 
remembrance  of  the  world,  it  shares  the  destiny  which 
overtakes  everything  local  and  personal  in  nature ;  and  the 
accidental  facts,  on  which  a  battle  of  principles  was  fought, 
have  already  passed,  or  are  fast  passing,  into  oblivion.  We 
have  lost  all  interest  in  Milton  as  the  redoubted  disputant 
of  a  sect ;  but  by  his  own  innate  worth  this  man  has  stead- 
ily risen  in  the  world's  reverence,  and  occupies  a  more 
imposing  place  in  the  mind  of  men  at  this  hour  than  ever 
before. 

It  is  the  aspect  which  he  presents  to  this  generation  that 
alone  concerns  us.  Milton,  the  controvertist,  has  lost  his 
popularity  long  ago ;  and,  if  we  skip  the  pages  of  "  Paradise 


JOHN  MILTON.  103 

Lost  "  where  "  God  the  Father  argues  like  a  school  divine," 
so  did  the  next  age  to  his  own.  But  we  are  persuaded  he 
kindles  a  love  and  emulation  in  us  which  he  did  not  in  fore- 
going generations.  We  think  we  have  seen  and  heard  criti- 
cism upon  the  poems  which  the  bard  himself  would  have 
more  valued  than  the  recorded  praise  of  Dryden,  Addison, 
and  Johnson,  because  it  came  nearer  to  the  mark ;  was  finer 
and  closer  appreciation ;  the  praise  of  intimate  knowledge 
and  delight;  and,  of  course,  more  welcome  to  the  poet 
than  the  general  and  vague  acknowledgment  of  his  genius 
by  those  able  but  unsympathizing  critics.  We  think  we 
have  heard  the  recitation  of  his  verses  by  genius,  which 
found  in  them  that  which  itself  would  say ;  recitation  which 
told,  in  the  diamond  sharpness  of  every  articulation,  that 
now  first  were  such  perception  and  enjoyment  possible ;  the 
perception  and  enjoyment  of  all  his  varied  rhythm,  and 
his  perfect  fusion  of  the  classic  and  the  English  styles. 
This  is  a  poet's  right ;  for  every  masterpiece  of  art  goes 
on  for  some  ages  reconciling  the  world  unto  itself,  and 
despotically  fashioning  the  public  ear.  The  opposition  to 
it,  always  greatest  at  first,  continually  decreases  and  at 
last  ends;  and  a  new  race  grows  up  in  the  taste  and 
spirit  of  the  work,  with  the  utmost  advantage  for  seeing 
intimately  its  power  and  beauty. 

But  it  would  be  great  injustice  to  Milton  to  consider  him 
as  enjoying  merely  a  critical  reputation.  It  is  the  preroga- 
tive of  this  great  man  to  stand  at  this  hour  foremost  of  all 
men  in  literary  history,  and  so  (shall  we  not  say?)  of  all 
men,  in  the  power  to  inspire.  Virtue  goes  out  of  him  into 
others.  Leaving  out  of  view  the  pretensions  of  our  con- 
temporaries (always  an  incalculable  influence),  we  think  no 


104  JOHN  MILTON. 

man  can  be  named  whose  mind  still  acts  on  the  cultivated 
intellect  of  England  and  America  with  an  energy  compara- 
ble to  that  of  Milton.  As  a  poet,  Shakespeare  undoubt- 
edly transcends  and  far  surpasses  him  in  his  popularity  with 
foreign  nations ;  but  Shakespeare  is  a  voice  merely ;  who 
and  what  he  was  that  sang,  that  sings,  we  know  not.  Mil- 
ton stands  erect,  commanding,  still  visible  as  a  man  among 
men,  and  reads  the  laws  of  the  moral  sentiment  to  the  new- 
born race.  There  is  something  pleasing  in  the  affection 
with  which  we  can  regard  a  man  who  died  a  hundred  and 
sixty  years  ago  in  the  other  hemisphere,  who,  in  respect  to 
personal  relations,  is  to  us  as  the  wind,  yet  by  an  influence 
purely  spiritual  makes  us  jealous  for  his  fame  as  for  that  of 
a  near  friend.  He  is  identified  in  the  mind  with  all  select 
and  holy  images,  with  the  supreme  interests  of  the  human 
race.  If  hereby  we  attain  any  more  precision,  we  proceed 
to  say  that  we  think  no  man  in  these  later  ages,  and  few 
men  ever,  possessed  so  great  a  conception  of  the  manly 
character.  Better  than  any  other  he  has  discharged  the 
office  of  every  great  man,  namely,  to  raise  the  idea  of  man 
in  the  minds  of  his  contemporaries  and  of  posterity — to 
draw  after  nature  a  life  of  man,  exhibiting  such  a  compo- 
sition of  grace,  of  strength,  and  of  virtue  as  poet  had  not 
described  nor  hero  lived.  Human  nature  in  these  ages  is 
indebted  to  him  for  its  best  portrait.  Many  philosophers 
in  England,  France,  and  Germany  have  formally  dedicated 
their  study  to  this  problem ;  and  we  think  it  impossible  to 
recall  one  in  those  countries  who  communicates  the  same 
vibration  of  hope,  of  self-reverence,  of  piety,  of  delight  in 
beauty  which  the  name  of  Milton  awakens.  Lord  Bacon, 
who  has  written  much  and  with  prodigious  ability  on  this 


JOHN  MILTON.  IO5 

science,  shrinks  and  falters  before  the  absolute  and  un- 
courtly  Puritan.  Bacon's  "  Essays  "  are  the  portrait  of  an 
ambitious  and  profound  calculator — a  great  man  of  the 
vulgar  sort.  Of  the  upper  world  of  man's  being  they  speak 
few  and  faint  words.  The  man  of  Locke  is  virtuous  with- 
out enthusiasm,  and  intelligent  without  poetry.  Addison, 
Pope,  Hume,  and  Johnson,  students,  with  very  unlike  tem- 
per and  success,  of  the  same  subject,  can  not,  taken  to- 
gether, make  any  pretension  to  the  amount  or  the  quality 
of  Milton's  inspirations.  The  man  of  Lord  Chesterfield  is 
unworthy  to  touch  his  garment's  hem.  Franklin's  man  is 
a  frugal,  inoffensive,  thrifty  citizen,  but  savors  of  nothing 
heroic.  The  genius  of  France  has  not,  even  in  her  best 
days,  yet  culminated  in  any  one  head — not  in  Rousseau, 
not  in  Pascal,  not  in  Fenelon — into  such  perception  of  all 
the  attributes  of  humanity  as  to  entitle  it  to  any  rivalry  in 
these  lists.  In  Germany  the  greatest  writers  are  still  too 
recent  to  institute  a  comparison  ;  and  yet  we  are  tempted 
to  say  that  art  and  not  life  seems  to  be  the  end  of  their 
effort.  But  the  idea  of  a  purer  existence  than  any  he  saw 
around  him,  to  be  realized  in  the  life  and  conversation  of 
men,  inspired  every  act  and  every  writing  of  John  Milton. 
He  defined  the  object  of  education  to  be,  "  to  fit  a  man  to 
perform  justly,  skillfully,  and  magnanimously  all  the  offices, 
both  private  and  public,  of  peace  and  war."  He  declared 
that  "  he  who  would  aspire  to  write  well  hereafter  in  laud- 
able things,  ought  himself  to  be  a  true  poem ;  that  is,  a  com- 
position and  pattern  of  the  best  and  honorablest  things, 
not  presuming  to  sing  high  praises  of  heroic  men  or  famous 
cities  unless  he  have  in  himself  the  experience  and  the 
practice  of  all  that  which  is  praiseworthy."  Nor  is  there 


106  JOHN  MILTON. 

in  literature  a  more  noble  outline  of  a  wise  external  educa- 
tion than  that  which  he  drew  up  at  the  age  of  thirty-six  in 
his  "Letter  to  Samuel  Hartlib."  The  muscles,  the  nerves, 
and  the  flesh  with  which  this  skeleton  is  to  be  filled  up  and 
covered,  exist  in  his  works  and  must  be  sought  there. 

For  the  delineation  of  this  heroic  image  of  man,  Milton 
enjoyed  singular  advantages.  Perfections  of  body  and  of 
mind  are  attributed  to  him  by  his  biographers,  that,  if  the 
anecdotes  had  come  down  from  a  greater  distance  of  time, 
or  had  not  been  in  part  furnished  or  corroborated  by  politi- 
cal enemies,  would  lead  us  to  suspect  the  portraits  were 
ideal,  like  the  Cyrus  of  Xenophon,  the  Telemachus  of  Fene- 
lon,  or  the  popular  traditions  of  Alfred  the  Great. 

Handsome  to  a  proverb,  he  was  called  the  lady  of  his 
college.  Aubrey  says,  "  This  harmonical  and  ingenuous 
soul  dwelt  in  a  beautiful  and  well-proportioned  body."  His 
manners  and  his  carriage  did  him  no  injustice.  Wood,  his 
political  opponent,  relates  that  "his  deportment  was  affa- 
ble, his  gait  erect  and  manly,  bespeaking  courage  and  un- 
dauntedness."  Aubrey  adds  a  sharp  trait,  that  "he  pro- 
nounced the  letter  R  very  hard,  a  certain  sign  of  a  satirical 
genius."  He  had  the  senses  of  a  Greek.  His  eye  was  quick, 
and  he  was  accounted  an  excellent  master  of  his  rapier. 
His  ear  for  music  was  so  acute  that  he  was  not  only  enthu- 
siastic in  his  love,  but  a  skillful  performer  himself;  and  his 
voice,  we  are  told,  was  delicately  sweet  and  harmonious. 
He  insists  that  music  shall  make  a  part  of  a  generous  edu- 
cation. 

With  these  keen  perceptions,  he  naturally  received  a  love 
of  nature,  and  a  rare  susceptibility  to  impressions  from  ex- 
ternal beauty.  In  the  midst  of  London,  he  seems,  like  the 


JOHN  MILTON.  IO7 

creatures  of  the  field  and  the  forest,  to  have  been  tuned  in 
concord  with  the  order  of  the  world;  for  he  believed  his 
poetic  vein  only  flowed  from  the  autumnal  to  the  vernal 
equinox ;  and,  in  his  essay  on  "  Education,"  he  doubts 
whether,  in  the  fine  days  of  spring,  any  study  can  be  ac- 
complished by  young  men.  "  In  those  vernal  seasons  of  the 
year  when  the  air  is  calm  and  pleasant,  it  were  an  injury 
and  sullenness  against  Nature,  not  to  go  out  and  see  her 
riches  and  partake  in  her  rejoicing  with  heaven  and  earth." 
His  sensibility  to  impressions  from  beauty  needs  no  proof 
from  his  history ;  it  shines  through  every  page.  The  form 
and  the  voice  of  Leonora  Baroni  seem  to  have  captivated 
him  in  Rome,  and  to  her  he  addressed  his  Italian  sonnets 
and  Latin  epigrams. 

To  these  endowments  it  must  be  added  that  his  address 
and  his  conversation  were  worthy  of  his  fame.  His  house 
was  resorted  to  by  men  of  wit,  and  foreigners  came  to  Eng- 
land, we  are  told,  "  to  see  the  Lord  Protector  and  Mr.  Mil- 
ton." In  a  letter  to  one  of  his  foreign  correspondents, 
Emeric  Bigot,  and  in  reply  apparently  to  some  compliment 
on  his  powers  of  conversation,  he  writes  :  "  Many  have  been 
celebrated  for  their  compositions  whose  common  conversa- 
tion and  intercourse  have  betrayed  no  marks  of  sublimity  or 
genius.  But,  as  far  as  possible,  I  aim  to  show  myself  equal 
in  thought  and  speech  to  what  I  have  written,  if  I  have 
written  anything  well." 

These  endowments  received  the  benefit  of  a  careful  and 
happy  discipline.  His  father's  care,  seconded  by  his  own 
endeavor,  introduced  him  to  a  profound  skill  in  all  the  trea- 
sures of  the  Latin,  Greek,  Hebrew,  and  Italian  tongues ;  and, 
to  enlarge  and  enliven  his  elegant  learning,  he  was  sent  into 


io8  JOHN  MILTON. 

Italy,  where  he  beheld  the  remains  of  ancient  art,  and  the 
rival  works  of  Raphael,  Michael  Angelo,  and  Correggio  ; 
where  also  he  received  social  and  academical  honors 
from  the  learned  and  the  great.  In  Paris  he  became  ac- 
quainted with  Grotius ;  in  Florence  or  Rome  with  Galileo  ; 
and  probably  no  traveler  ever  entered  that  country  of  his- 
tory with  better  right  to  its  hospitality,  none  upon  whom  its 
influences  could  have  fallen  more  congenially. 

Among  the  advantages  of  his  foreign  travel,  Milton  cer- 
tainly did  not  count  it  the  least  that  it  contributed  to  forge 
and  polish  that  great  weapon  of  which  he  acquired  such  ex- 
traordinary mastery — his  power  of  language.  His  lore  of. 
foreign  tongues  added  daily  to  his  consummate  skill  in  the 
use  of  his  own.  No  individual  writer  has  been  an  equal 
benefactor  of  the  English  tongue  by  showing  its  capabilities. 
Very  early  in  life  he  became  conscious  that  he  had  more  to 
say  to  his  fellow  men  than  they  had  fit  words  to  embody. 
At  nineteen  years,  in  a  college  exercise,  he  addresses  his  na- 
tive language,  saying  to  it  that  it  would  be  his  choice  to 
leave  trifles  for  a  grave  argument — 

"  Such  as  may  make  thee  search  thy  coffers  round, 
Before  thou  clothe  my  fancy  in  fit  sound  ; 
Such  where  the  deep  transported  mind  may  soar 
Above  the  wheeling  poles,  and  at  heaven's  door 
Look  in,  and  see  each  blissful  deity, 
How  he  before  the  thunderous  throne  doth  lie." 

Michael  Angelo  calls  "  him  alone  an  artist  whose  hands 
can  execute  what  his  mind  has  conceived."  The  world,  no 
doubt,  contains  very  many  of  that  class  of  men  whom  Words- 
worth denominates  "  silent  poets"  whose  minds  teem  with 


JOHN  MILTON.  IOp 

images  which  they  want  words  to  clothe.  But  Milton's  mind 
seems  to  have  no  thought  or  emotion  which  refused  to  be 
recorded.  His  mastery  of  his  native  tongue  was  more  than 
to  use  it  as  well  as  any  other ;  he  cast  it  into  new  forms. 
He  uttered  in  it  things  unheard  before.  Not  imitating,  but 
rivaling  Shakespeare,  he  scattered,  in  tones  of  prolonged 
and  delicate  melody,  his  pastoral  and  romantic  fancies ; 
then,  soaring  into  unattempted  strains,  he  made  it  capable 
of  an  unknown  majesty,  and  bent  it  to  express  every  trait  of 
beauty,  every  shade  of  thought ;  and  searched  the  kennel 
and  jakes  as  well  as  the  palaces  of  sound  for  the  harsh  dis- 
cords of  his  polemic  wrath.  We  may  even  apply  to  his  per- 
formance on  the  instrument  of  language  his  own  description 
of  music : 

"    ....  notes,  with  many  a  winding  bout 
Of  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out, 
With  wanton  heed  and  giddy  cunning, 
The  melting  voice  through  mazes  running, 
Untwisting  all  the  chains  that  tie 
The  hidden  soul  of  harmony." 

But,  while  Milton  was  conscious  of  possessing  this  intel- 
lectual voice,  penetrating  through  ages,  and  propelling  its 
melodious  undulations  forward  through  the  coming  world, 
he  knew  also  that  this  mastery  of  language  was  a  secondary 
power,  and  he  respected  the  mysterious  source  whence  it 
had  its  spring;  namely,  clear  conceptions  and  a  devoted 
heart.  "  For  me,"  he  said,  in  his  "  Apology  for  Smectym- 
nuus,"  "although  I  can  not  say  that  I  am  utterly  untrained 
in  those  rules  which  best  rhetoricians  have  given,  or  unac- 
quainted with  those  examples  which  the  prime  authors  of 


no  JOHN  MILTON. 

eloquence  have  written  in  any  learned  tongue,  yet  true  elo- 
quence I  find  to  be  none  but  the  serious  and  hearty  love 
of  truth  ;  and  that  whose  mind  soever  is  fully  possessed 
with  a  fervent  desire  to  know  good  things,  and  with  the 
dearest  charity  to  infuse  the  knowledge  of  them  into  others, 
when  such  a  man  would  speak,  his  words,  by  what  I  can  ex- 
press, like  so  many  nimble  and  airy  servitors,  trip  about  him 
at  command,  and  in  well-ordered  files,  as  he  would  wish, 
fall  aptly  into  their  own  places." 

But,  as  basis  or  fountain  of  his  rare  physical  and  intel- 
lectual accomplishments,  the  man  Milton  was  just  and  de- 
vout.    He  is  rightly  dear  to  mankind,  because  in  him— 
among  so  many  perverse  and  partial  men  of  genius — in  him 
humanity  rights  itself;  the   old   eternal    goodness  finds  a 
home  in  his  breast,  and  for  once  shows  itself  beautiful.     His 
gifts  are  subordinated  to  his  moral  sentiments.     And  his 
virtues  are  so  graceful  that  they  seem  rather  talents  than 
labors.     Among  so  many  contrivances  as  the  world  has  seen 
to  make  holiness  ugly,  in  Milton  at  least  it  was  so  pure  a 
flame  that  the  foremost  impression  his  character  makes  is 
that  of  elegance.     The  victories  tff  the  conscience  in  him 
are  gained  by  the  commanding  charm  which  all  the  severe 
and  restrictive  virtues  have  for  him.     His  virtues  remind  us 
of  what  Plutarch  said  of  Timoleon's  victories,  that  they  re- 
sembled Homer's  verses,  they  ran  so  easy  and  natural.     His 
habits  of  living  were  austere.     He  was  abstemious  in  diet, 
chaste,  an  early  riser,  and  industrious.     He  tells  us,  in  a 
Latin  poem,  that  the  lyrist  may  indulge  in  wine  and  in  a 
freer  life ;  but  that  he  who  would  write  an  epic  to  the  na- 
tions must  eat  beans  and  drink  water.     Yet  in  his  severity 
is  no  grimace  or  effort.     He  serves  from  love,  not  from  fear. 


JOHN  MILTON.  TII 

He  is  innocent  and  exact,  because  his  taste  was  so  pure  and 
delicate.  He  acknowledges  to  his  friend  Diodati,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-one,  that  he  is  enamored,  if  ever  any  was,  of  moral 
perfection.  "  For,  whatever  the  Deity  may  have  bestowed 
upon  me  in  other  respects,  he  has  certainly  inspired  me,  if 
any  ever  were  inspired,  with  a  passion  for  the  good  and  fair. 
Nor  did  Ceres,  according  to  the  fable,  ever  seek  her  daughter 
Proserpine  with  such  unceasing  solicitude  as  I  have  sought 
this  rov  Kakov  ideav,  this  perfect  model  of  the  beautiful  in 
all  forms  and  appearances  of  things." 

When  he  was  charged  with  loose  habits  of  living,  he  de- 
clares that  "  a  certain  niceness  of  nature,  an  honest  haughti- 
ness and  self-esteem  either  of  what  I  was  or  what  I  might 
be,  and  a  modesty,  kept  me  still  above  those  low  descents 
of  mind,  beneath  which  he  must  deject  and  plunge  himself, 
that  can  agree  "  to  such  degradation. 

"His  mind  gave  him,"  he  said,  "  that  every  free  and  gen- 
tle spirit,  without  that  oath  of  chastity,  ought  to  be  born  a 
knight ;  nor  needed  to  expect  the  gilt  spur,  or  the  laying  of 
a  sword  upon  his  shoulder,  to  stir  him  up,  by  his  counsel  and 
his  arm,  to  secure  and  protect "  attempted  innocence. 

He  states  these  things,  he  says,  "  to  show  that,  though 
Christianity  had  been  but  slightly  taught  him,  yet  a  certain 
reservedness  of  natural  disposition  and  moral  discipline, 
learned  out  of  the  noblest  philosophy,  was  enough  to  keep 
him  in  disdain  of  far  less  incontinences  than  these,"  that  had 
been  charged  on  him.  In  like  spirit,  he  replies  to  the  sus- 
picious calumny  respecting  his  morning  haunts.  "  Those 
morning  haunts  are  where  they  should  be,  at  home;  not 
sleeping,  or  concocting  the  surfeits  of  an  irregular  feast,  but 
up  and  stirring,  in  winter,  often  ere  the  sound  of  any  bell 


ii2  JOHN  MILTON. 

awake  men  to  labor  or  devotion ;  in  summer,  as  oft  with  the 
bird  that  first  rouses,  or  not  much  tardier,  to  read  good  au- 
thors, or  cause  them  to  be  read,  till  the  attention  be  weary, 
or  memory  have  its  perfect  fraught ;  then  with  useful  and 
generous  labors  preserving  the  body's  health  and  hardiness, 
to  render  lightsome,  clear,  and  not  lumpish  obedience  to  the 
mind,  to  the  cause  of  religion,  and  our  country's  liberty, 
when  it  shall  require  firm  hearts  in  sound  bodies  to  stand 
and  cover  their  stations.  These  are  the  morning  practices." 
This  native  honor  never  forsook  him.  It  is  the  spirit  of 
"  Comus,"  the  loftiest  song  in  the  praise  of  chastity  that  is 
in  any  language.  It  always  sparkles  in  his  eyes.  It  breathed 
itself  over  his  decent  form.  It  refined  his  amusements, 
which  consisted  in  gardening,  in  exercise  with  the  sword, 
and  in  playing  on  the  organ.  It  engaged  his  interest  in 
chivalry,  in  courtesy,  in  whatsoever  savored  of  generosity 
and  nobleness.  This  magnanimity  shines  in  all  his  life.  He 
accepts  a  high  impulse  at  every  risk,  and  deliberately  un- 
dertakes the  defense  of  the  English  people,  when  advised 
by  his  physicians  that  he  does  it  at  the  cost  of  sight.  There 
is  a  forbearance  even  in  his  polemics.  He  opens  the  war 
and  strikes  the  first  blow.  When  he  had  cut  down  his  op- 
ponents he  left  the  details  of  death  and  plunder  to  meaner 
partisans.  He  said,  "  he  had  learned  the  prudence  of  the 
Roman  soldier,  not  to  stand  breaking  of  legs,  when  the 
breath  was  quite  out  of  the  body." 

To  this  antique  heroism  Milton  added  the  genius  of  the 
Christian  sanctity.  Few  men  could  be  cited  who  have  so 
well  understood  what  is  peculiar  in  the  Christian  ethics, 
and  the  precise  aid  it  has  brought  to  men  in  being  an  em- 
phatic affirmation  of  the  omnipotence  of  spiritual  laws,  and, 


JOHN  MILTON.  II3 

by  way  of  marking  the  contrast  to  vulgar  opinions,  laying 
its  chief  stress  on  humility.  The  indifferency  of  a  wise 
mind  to  what  is  called  high  and  low,  and  the  fact  that  true 
greatness  is  a  perfect  humility,  are  revelations  of  Christian- 
ity which  Milton  well  understood.  They  give  an  inexhaust- 
ible truth  to  all  his  compositions.  His  firm  grasp  of  this 
truth  is  his  weapon  against  the  prelates.  He  celebrates  in 
the  martyrs,  "  the  unresistible  might  of  weakness."  He  told 
the  bishops  that,  "  instead  of  showing  the  reason  of  their 
lowly  condition  from  divine  example  and  command,  they 
seek  to  prove  their  high  preeminence  from  human  consent 
and  authority."  He  advises  that  in  country  places,  rather 
than  to  trudge  many  miles  to  a  church,  public  worship  be 
maintained  nearer  home,  as  in  a  house  or  barn.  "For, 
notwithstanding  the  gaudy  superstition  of  some  still  devoted 
ignorantly  to  temples,  we  may  be  well  assured  that  He  who 
disdained  not  to  be  born  in  a  manger  disdains  not  to  be 
preached  in  a  barn."  And  the  following  passage,  in  the 
"  Reason  of  Church  Government,"  indicates  his  own  per- 
ception of  the  doctrine  of  humility :  "  Albeit,  I  must  con- 
fess to  be  half  in  doubt  whether  I  should  bring  it  forth  or 
no,  it  being  so  contrary  to  the  eye  of  the  world  that  I  shall 
endanger  either  not  to  be  regarded  or  not  to  be  understood. 
For,  who  is  there,  almost,  that  measures  wisdom  by  simplici- 
ty, strength  by  suffering,  dignity  by  lowliness  ?  "  Obeying 
this  sentiment,  Milton  deserved  the  apostrophe  of  Words- 
worth : 

"  Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free, 

So  didst  them  travel  on  life's  common  way 
In  cheerful  godliness ;  and  yet  thy  heart 
The  lowlies-t  duties  on  itself  did  lay." 
8 


II4  JOHN  MILTON. 

He  laid  on  himself  the  lowliest  duties.  Johnson  petulantly 
taunts  Milton  with  "  great  promise  and  small  performance  " 
in  returning  from  Italy  because  his  country  was  in  danger, 
and  then  opening  a  private  school.  Milton,  wiser,  felt  no 
absurdity  in  this  conduct.  He  returned  into  his  revolution- 
ized country,  and  assumed  an  honest  and  useful  task  by 
which  he  might  serve  the  state  daily,  while  he  launched 
from  time  to  time  his  formidable  bolts  against  the  enemies 
of  liberty.  He  felt  the  heats  of  that  "  love  "  which  "  esteems 
no  office  mean."  He  compiled  a  logic  for  boys;  he  wrote 
a  grammar ;  and  devoted  much  of  his  time  to  the  preparing 
of  a  Latin  dictionary.  But  the  religious  sentiment  warmed 
his  writings  and  conduct  with  the  highest  affection  of  faith. 
The  memorable  covenant  which  in  his  youth — in  the  second 
book  of  the  "Reason  of  Church  Government" — he  makes 
with  God  and  his  reader  expressed  the  faith  of  his  old  age. 
For  the  first  time  since  many  ages  the  invocations  of  the 
Eternal  Spirit  in  the  commencement  of  his  books  are  not 
poetic  forms,  but  are  thoughts,  and  so  are  still  read  with 
delight.  His  views  of  choice  of  profession  and  choice  in 
marriage  equally  expect  a  divine  leading. 

Thus  chosen  by  the  felicity  of  his  nature  and  of  his 
breeding  for  the  clear  perception  of  all  that  is  graceful  and 
all  that  is  great  in  man,  Milton  was  not  less  happy  in  his 
times.  His  birth  fell  upon  the  agitated  years  when  the 
discontents  of  the  English  Puritans  were  fast  drawing  to  a 
head  against  the  tyranny  of  the  Stuarts.  No  period  has 
surpassed  that  in  the  general  activity  of  mind.  It  is  said 
that  no  opinion,  no  civil,  religious,  moral  dogma  can  be 
produced  that  was  not  broached  in  the  fertile  brain  of  that 
age.  Questions  that  involve  all  social  and  personal  rights 


JOHN  MILTON.  n5 

were  hasting  to  be  decided  by  the  sword,  and  were  searched 
by  eyes  to  which  the  love  of  freedom,  civil  and  religious, 
lent  new  illumination.  Milton,  gentle,  learned,  delicately 
bred  in  all  the  elegancy  of  art  and  learning,  was  set  down 
in  England  in  the  stern,  almost  fanatic,  society  of  the  Puri- 
tans. The  part  he  took,  the  zeal  of  his  fellowship,  make  us 
acquainted  with  the  greatness  of  his  spirit,  as  in  tranquil 
times  we  could  not  have  known  it.  Susceptible  as  Burke 
to  the  attractions  of  historical  prescription,  of  royalty,  of 
chivalry,  of  an  ancient  church  illustrated  by  old  martyrdoms 
and  installed  in  cathedrals,  he  threw  himself,  the  flower  of 
elegancy,  on  the  side  of  the  reeking  conventicle,  the  side  of 
humanity,  but  unlearned  and  unadorned.  His  muse  was 
brave  and  humane,  as  well  as  sweet.  He  felt  the  dear  love 
of  native  land  and  native  language.  The  humanity  which 
warms  his  pages  begins,  as  it  should,  at  home.  He  preferred 
his  own  English,  so  manlike  he  was,  to  the  Latin,  which 
contained  all  the  treasures  of  his  memory.  "  My  mother 
bore  me,"  he  said, '  a  speaker  of  what  God  made  mine  own, 
and  not  a  translator."  He  told  the  Parliament  that  "the 
imprimaturs  of  Lambeth  House  had  been  writ  in  Latin ; 
for  that  our  English,  the  language  of  men  ever  famous  and 
foremost  in  the  achievements  of  liberty,  will  not  easily  find 
servile  letters  enow  to  spell  such  a  dictatory  presumption." 
At  one  time  he  meditated  writing  a  poem  on  the  settlement 
of  Britain ;  and  a  history  of  England  was  one  of  the  three 
main  tasks  which  he  proposed  to  himself.  He  proceeded 
in  it  no  further  than  to  the  Conquest.  He  studied  with 
care  the  character  of  his  countrymen,  and  once  in  the 
"  History/'  and  once  again  in  the  "  Reason  of  Church  Govern- 
ment," he  has  recorded  his  judgment  of  the  English  genius. 


n6  JOHN  MILTON, 

Thus  drawn  into  the  great  controversies  of  the  times,  in 
them  he  is  never  lost  in  a  party.  His  private  opinions  and 
private  conscience  always  distinguish  him.  That  which 
drew  him  to  the  party  was  his  love  of  liberty,  ideal  liberty ; 
this,  therefore,  he  could  not  sacrifice  to  any  party.  Toland 
tells  us  :  "  As  he  looked  upon  true  and  absolute  freedom  to 
be  the  greatest  happiness  of  this  life,  whether  to  societies 
or  single  persons,  so  he  thought  constraint  of  any  sort  to  be 
the  utmost  misery ;  for  which  reason  he  used  to  tell  those 
about  him  the  entire  satisfaction  of  his  mind,  that  he  had 
constantly  employed  his  strength  and  faculties  in  the  de- 
fense of  liberty,  and  in  direct  opposition  to  slavery."  Truly 
he  was  an  apostle  of  freedom;  of  freedom  in  the  house, 
in  the  state,  in  the  church ;  freedom  of  speech,  freedom  of 
the  press,  yet  in  his  own  mind  discriminated  from  savage 
license,  because  that  which  he  desired  was  the  liberty  of 
the  wise  man  containing  itself  in  the  limits  of  virtue.  He 
pushed,  as  far  as  any  in  that  democratic  age,  his  ideas  of 
civil  liberty.  He  proposed  to  establish  a  republic,  of  which 
the  federal  power  was  weak  and  loosely  defined,  and  the 
substantial  power  should  remain  with  primary  assemblies. 
He  maintained  that  a  nation  may  try,  judge,  and  slay  their 
king  if  he  be  a  tyrant.  He  pushed  as  far  his  views  of 
ecclesiastical  liberty.  He  taught  the  doctrine  of  unlimited 
toleration.  One  of  his  tracts  is  writ  to  prove  that  no 
power  on  earth  can  compel  in  matters  of  religion.  He 
maintained  the  doctrine  of  literary  liberty,  denouncing  the 
censorship  of  the  press,  and  insisting  that  a  book  shall 
come  into  the  world  as  freely  as  a  man,  so  only  it  bear  the 
name  of  author  or  printer,  and  be  responsible  for  itself  like 
a  man.  He  maintained  the  doctrine  of  domestic  liberty,  or 


JOHN  MILTON.  n7 

the  liberty  of  divorce,  on  the  ground  that  unfit  disposition  of 
mind  was  a  better  reason  for  the  act  of  divorce  than  infirmity 
of  body,  which  was  good  ground  in  law.  The  tracts  he  wrote 
on  these  topics  are,  for  the  most  part,  as  fresh  and  pertinent 
to-day  as  they  were  then.  The  events  which  produced  them, 
the  practical  issues  to  which  they  tend,  are  mere  occasions 
for  this  philanthropist  to  blow  his  trumpet  for  human  rights. 
They  are  all  varied  applications  of  one  principle,  the  liberty 
of  the  wise  man.  He  sought  absolute  truth,  not  accommo- 
dating truth.  His  opinions  on  all  subjects  are  formed  for 
man  as  he  ought  to  be — for  a  nation  of  Miltons.  He  would 
be  divorced  when  he  finds  in  his  consort  unfit  disposition, 
knowing  that  he  should  not  abuse  that  liberty,  because  with 
his  whole  heart  he  abhors  licentiousness  and  loves  chastity. 
He  defends  the  slaying  of  the  king,  because  a  king  is  a 
king  no  longer  than  he  governs  by  the  laws ;  "  it  would  be 
right  to  kill  Philip  of  Spain  making  an  inroad  into  England, 
and  what  right  the  King  of  Spain  hath  to  govern  us  at  all, 
the  same  hath  the  King  Charles  to  govern  tyranically."  He 
would  remove  hirelings  out  of  the  Church,  and  support 
preachers  by  voluntary  contributions ;  requiring  that  such 
only  should  preach  as  have  faith  enough  to  accept  so 
self-denying  and  precarious  a  mode  of  life,  scorning  to 
take  thought  for  the  aspects  of  prudence  and  expediency. 
The  most  devout  man  of  his  time,  he  frequented  no  church ; 
probably  from  a  disgust  at  the  fierce  spirit  of  the  pulpits. 
And  so,  throughout  all  his  actions  and  opinions,  is  he  a 
consistent  spiritualist,  or  believer  in  the  omnipotence  of 
spiritual  laws.  He  wished  that  his  writings  should  be 
communicated  only  to  those  who  desired  to  see  them.  He 
thought  nothing  honest  was  low.  He  thought  he  could  be 


'n8  JOHN  MILTON. 

famous  only  in  proportion  as  he  enjoyed  the  approbation 
of  the  good.  He  admonished  his  friend  "not  to  admire 
military  prowess,  or  things  in  which  force  is  of  most  avail. 
For  it  would  not  be  matter  of  rational  wonder  if  the 
wethers  of  our  country  should  be  born  with  horns  that 
could  batter  down  cities  and  towns.  Learn  to  estimate 
great  characters,  not  by  the  amount  of  animal  strength, 
but  by  the  habitual  justice  and  temperance  of  their  con- 
duct." 

Was  there  not  a  fitness  in  the  undertaking  of  such  a 
person  to  write  a  poem  on  the  subject  of  Adam,  the  first 
man  ?  By  his  sympathy  with  all  nature,  by  the  proportion 
of  his  powers,  by  great  knowledge,  and  by  religion,  he 
would  reascend  to  the  height  from  which  our  nature  is 
supposed  to  have  descended.  From  a  just  knowledge  of 
what  man  should  be,  he  described  what  he  was.  He  be- 
holds him  as  he  walked  in  Eden : 

"  His  fair  large  front  and  eye  sublime  declared 
Absolute  rule ;  and  hyacinthine  locks 
Round  from  his  parted  forelock  manly  hung 
Clustering,  but  not  beneath  his  shoulders  broad." 

And  the  soul  of  this  divine  creature  is  excellent  as  his 
form.  The  tone  of  his  thought  and  passion  is  as  health- 
ful, as  even,  and  as  vigorous  as  befits  the  new  and  perfect 
model  of  a  race  of  gods. 

The  perception  we  have  attributed  to  Milton,  of  a  purer 
ideal  of  humanity,  modifies  his  poetic  genius.  The  man  is 
paramount  to  the  poet.  His  fancy  is  never  transcendent, 
extravagant;  but,  as  Bacon's  imagination  was  said  to  be 
"  the  noblest  that  ever  contented  itself  to  minister  to  the 


JOHN  MILTON.  II9 

understanding,"  so  Milton's  ministers  to  character.     Mil- 
ton's sublimest  song,  bursting  into  heaven  with  its  peals  of 
melodious  thunder,  is  the  voice  of  Milton  still.     Indeed, 
throughout  his  poems  one  may  see  under  a  thin  veil  the 
opinions,  the  feelings,  even  the  incidents  of  the  poet's  life, 
still  reappearing.      The  sonnets  are  all  occasional  poems. 
"  L'Allegro  "  and  "  II  Penseroso  "  are  but  a  finer  autobiog- 
raphy of  his  youthful  fancies  at  Harefield.     The  "  Comus  " 
is  but  a  transcript  in  charming  numbers  of  that  philosophy 
of  chastity  which,  in  the  "  Apology  for  Smectymnuus,"  and 
in  the  "  Reason  of  Church  Government,"  he  declares  to  be 
his  defense  and  religion.     The  "  Samson  Agonistes  "  is  too 
broad  an  expression  of  his  private  griefs  to  be  mistaken, 
and  is  a  version  of  the  "  Doctrine  and  Discipline  of  Di- 
vorce."    The  most  affecting  passages  in  "  Paradise  Lost  " 
are  personal  allusions ;  and,  when  we  are  fairly  in  Eden, 
Adam  and  Milton  are  often  difficult  to  be  separated.    Again, 
in  "  Paradise  Regained,"  we  have  the  most  distinct  marks 
of  the  progress  of  the  poet's  mind,  in  the  revision  and  en- 
largement of  his  religious  opinions.     This  may  be  thought 
to  abridge  his  praise  as  a  poet.     It  is  true  of  Homer  and 
Shakespeare  that  they  do  not  appear  in  their  poems ;  that 
those  prodigious  geniuses  did  cast  themselves  so  totally  into 
their  song  that  their  individuality  vanishes,  and    the  poet 
towers  to  the  sky,  while  the  man  quite  disappears.     The 
fact  is  memorable.     Shall  we  say  that,  in  our  admiration  and 
joy  in  these  wonderful  poems,  we  have  even  a  feeling  of 
regret  that  the  men  knew  not  what  they  did ;    that  they 
were   too   passive   in   their   great   service  ;   were   channels 
through  which  streams  of  thought  flowed  from   a  higher 
source  which  they  did  not  appropriate,  did  not  blend  with 


120  JOHN  MILTON. 

their  own  being.  Like  prophets,  they  seem  but  imperfectly 
aware  of  the  import  of  their  own  utterances.  We  hesitate 
to  say  such  things,  and  say  them  only  to  the  unpleasing 
dualism,  when  the  man  and  the  poet  show  like  a  double 
consciousness.  Perhaps  we  speak  to  no  fact  but  to  mere 
fables  of  an  idle  mendicant,  Homer ;  and  of  a  Shakespeare, 
content  with  a  mean  and  jocular  way  of  life.  Be  it  how  it 
may,  the  genius  and  office  of  Milton  were  different,  namely, 
to  ascend  by  the  aids  of  his  learning  and  his  religion — by 
an  equal  perception,  that  is,  of  the  past  and  the  future — to 
a  higher  insight  and  more  lively  delineation  of  the  heroic 
life  of  man.  This  was  his  poem  ;  whereof  all  his  indignant 
pamphlets  and  all  his  soaring  verses  are  only  single  cantos 
or  detached  stanzas.  It  was  plainly  needful  that  his  poetry 
should  be  a  version  of  his  own  life,  in  order  to  give  weight 
and  solemnity  to  his  thoughts,  by  which  they  might  pene- 
trate and  possess  the  imagination  and  the  will  of  mankind. 
The  creations  of  Shakespeare  are  cast  into  the  world  of 
thought,  to  no  further  end  than  to  delight.  Their  intrinsic 
beauty  is  their  excuse  for  being.  Milton,  fired  "  with 
dearest  charity  to  infuse  the  knowledge  of  good  things  into 
others,"  tasked  his  giant  imagination  and  exhausted  the 
stores  of  his  intellect  for  an  end  beyond,  namely,  to  teach. 
His  own  conviction  it  is  which  gives  such  authority  to  his 
strain.  Its  reality  is  its  force.  If  out  of  the  heart  it  came, 
to  the  heart  it  must  go.  What  schools  and  epochs  of  com- 
mon rhymers  would  it  need  to  make  a  counterbalance  to 
the  severe  oracles  of  his  muse ! — 

"  In  them  is  plainest  taught  and  easiest  learned, 
What  makes  a  nation  happy,  and  keeps  it  so." 


JOHN  MILTON.  I2i 

The  loverxof  Milton  reads  one  sense  in  his  prose  and  in 
his  metrical  compositions;  and  sometimes  the  muse  soars 
highest  in  the  former,  because  the  thought  is  more  sincere. 
Of  his  prose  in  general,  not  the  style  alone,  but  the  argu- 
ment also,  is  poetic ;  according  to  Lord  Bacon's  definition 
of  poetry,  following  that  of  Aristotle,  "  Poetry,  not  finding 
the  actual  world  exactly  conformed  to  its  idea  of  good  and 
fair,  seeks  to  accommodate  the  shows  of  things  to  the  de- 
sires of  the  mind,  and  to  create  an  ideal  world  better  than 
the  world  of  experience."  Such  certainly  is  the  explanation 
of  Milton's  tracts.  Such  is  the  apology  to  be  entered  for  the 
plea  for  freedom  of  divorce ;  an  essay  which,  from  the  first 
until  now,  has  brought  a  degree  of  obloquy  on  his  name.  It 
was  a  sally  of  the  extravagant  spirit  of  the  time  overjoyed,  as 
in  the  French  Revolution,  with  the  sudden  victories  it  had 
gained,  and  eager  to  carry  on  the  standard  of  truth  to  new 
heights.  It  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  poem  on  one  of  the  griefs 
of  man's  condition,  namely,  unfit  marriage.  And  as  many 
poems  have  been  written  upon  unfit  society,  commending 
solitude,  yet  have  not  been  proceeded  against,  though  their 
end  was  hostile  to  the  state,  so  should  this  receive  that 
charity  which  an  angelic  soul  suffering  more  keenly  than 
others  from  the  unavoidable  evils  of  human  life  is  en- 
titled to. 

We  have  offered  no  apology  for  expanding  to  such  length 
our  commentary  on  the  character  of  John  Milton,  who,  in 
old  age,  in  solitude,  in  neglect,  and  blind,  wrote  the  "  Para- 
dise Lost " — a  man  whom  labor  or  danger  never  deterred 
from  whatever  efforts  a  love  of  the  supreme  interests  of  man 
prompted.  For  are  we  not  the  better  ;  are  not  all  men  for- 
tified by  the  remembrance  of  the  bravery,  the  purity,  the 


122  JOHN  MILTON. 

temperance,  the  toil,  the  independence,  and  the  angelic 
devotion  of  this  man,  who,  in  a  revolutionary  age,  taking 
counsel  only  of  himself,  endeavored  in  his  writings  and  in 
his  life  to  carry  out  the  life  of  man  to  new  heights  of 
spiritual  grace  and  dignity,  without  any  abatement  of  its 
strength  ? 


THE 

LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 


"  LIFE,"  says  Sir  William  Temple,  "  is  like  wine ;  he 
who  would  drink  it  pure  must  not  drain  it  to  the  dregs." 
"  I  do  not  wish,"  Byron  would  say,  "  to  live  to  become  old." 
The  expression  of  the  ancient  poet,  "  that  to  die  young  is  a 
boon  of  Heaven  to  its  favorites,"  was  repeatedly  quoted  by 
him  with  approbation.  The  certainty  of  a  speedy  release 
he  would  call  the  only  relief  against  burdens  which  could 
not  be  borne  were  they  not  of  very  limited  duration. 

But  the  general  sentiment  of  mankind  declares  length 
of  days  to  be  desirable.  After  an  active  and  successful 
career,  the  repose  of  decline  is  serene  and  cheerful.  By 
common  consent  gray  hairs  are  a  crown  of  glory ;  the  only 
object  of  respect  that  can  never  excite  envy.  The  hour  of 
evening  is  not  necessarily  overcast ;  and  the  aged  man,  ex- 
changing the  pursuits  of  ambition  for  the  quiet  of  observa- 
tion, the  strife  of  public  discussion  for  the  diffuse  but  in- 
structive language  of  experience,  passes  to  the  grave  amid 
grateful  recollections  and  the  tranquil  enjoyment  of  satis- 
fied desires. 

The  happy,  it  is  agreed  by  all,  are  afraid  to  contemplate 
their  end ;  the  unhappy,  it  has  been  said,  look  forward  to 
it  as  a  release  from  suffering.  "  I  think  of  death  often," 


I24    THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 

said  a  distinguished  but  dissatisfied  man ;  "  and  I  view  it  as 
a  refuge.  There  is  something  calm  and  soothing  to  me  in 
the  thought ;  and  the  only  time  that  I  feel  repugnance  to  it 
is  on  a  fine  day,  in  solitude,  in  a  beautiful  country,  when  all 
nature  seems  rejoicing  in  light  and  life." 

This  is  the  language  of  self-delusion.  Numerous  as  may 
be  the  causes  for  disgust  with  life,  its  close  is  never  contem- 
plated with  carelessness.  Religion  may  elevate  the  soul  to 
a  sublime  reliance  on  a  future  existence ;  nothing  else  can 
do  it.  The  love  of  honor  may  brave  danger ;  the  passion 
of  melancholy  may  indulge  an  aversion  to  continued  being ; 
philosophy  may  take  its  last  rest  with  composure ;  the  sense 
of  shame  may  conduct  to  fortitude ;  yet  they  who  would 
disregard  the  grave  must  turn  their  thoughts  from  the  con- 
sideration of  its  terrors.  It  is  an  impulse  of  nature  to  strive 
to  preserve  our  being;  and  the  longing  can  not  be  eradi- 
cated. The  mind  may  shun  the  contemplation  of  horrors  ; 
it  may  fortify  itself  by  refusing  to  observe  the  nearness  or 
the  extent  of  the  impending  evil ;  but  the  instinct  of  life  is 
stubborn ;  and  he  who  looks  directly  at  its  termination  and 
professes  indifference  is  a  hypocrite  or  is  self-deceived.  He 
that  calls  boldly  upon  Death  is  sure  to  be  dismayed  on  find- 
ing him  near.  The  oldest  are  never  so  old,  but  they  desire 
life  for  one  day  longer ;  the  child  looks  to  its  parent  as  if  to 
discern  a  glimpse  of  hope ;  even  the  infant,  as  it  exhales  its 
breath,  springs  from  its  pillow  to  meet  its  mother  as  if  there 
were  help  where  there  is  love. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  one  of  the  favorite  marshals  of 
Napoleon,  who,  in  a  battle  in  the  south  of  Germany,  was 
struck  by  a  cannon-ball,  and  so  severely  wounded  that  there 
was  no  possibility  of  a  respite.  Summoning  the  surgeon, 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.   I25 

he  ordered  his  wounds  to  be  dressed ;  and,  when  aid  was 
declared  to  be  unavailing,  the  dying  officer  clamorously  de- 
manded that  Napoleon  should  be  sent  for,  as  one  who  had 
power  to  stop  the  effusion  of  blood,  and  awe  nature  itself 
into  submission.  Life  expired  amid  maledictions  and  threats 
heaped  upon  the  innocent  surgeon.  This  foolish  frenzy 
may  have  appeared  like  blasphemy  ;  it  was  but  the  uncon- 
trolled outbreak  of  the  instinct  of  self-preservation,  in  a 
rough  and  undisciplined  mind. 

Even  in  men  of  strong  religious  convictions,  the  end  is 
not  always  met  with  serenity  ;  and  the  preacher  and  philoso- 
pher sometimes  express  an  apprehension  which  can  not  be 
pacified.  The  celebrated  British  moralist,  Samuel  Johnson, 
was  the  instructor  of  his  age ;  his  works  are  full  of  the  au- 
stere lessons  of  reflecting  wisdom.  It  might  have  been  sup- 
posed that  religion  would  have  reconciled  him  to  the  decree 
of  Providence  ;  that  philosophy  would  have  taught  him  to 
acquiesce  in  a  necessary  issue  ;  that  science  would  have  in- 
spired him  with  confidence  in  the  skill  of  his  medical  attend- 
ants. And  yet  it  was  not  so.  A  sullen  gloom  overclouded 
his  faculties  ;  he  could  not  summon  resolution  to  tranquilize 
his  emotions;  and,  in  the  absence  of  his  attendants,  he 
gashed  himself  with  ghastly  and  debilitating  wounds,  as  if 
the  blind  lacerations  of  his  misguided  arm  could  prolong 
the  moments  of  an  existence  which  the  best  physicians  of 
London  declared  to  be  numbered. 

"  Is  there  anything  on  earth  I  can  do  for  you  ?  "  said 
Taylor  to  Wolcott,  known  as  Peter  Pindar,  as  he  lay  on  his 
death-bed.  "  Give  me  back  my  youth,"  were  the  last  words 
of  the  satirical  buffoon. 

If   Johnson   could   hope   for   relief   from    self-inflicted 


126    THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 

wounds,  if  the  poet  could  prefer  to  his  friend  the  useless 
prayer  for  a  restoration  of  youth,  we  may  readily  believe 
what  historians  relate  to  us  of  the  end  of  Louis  XI.  of 
France,  a  monarch  who  was  not  destitute  of  eminent  quali- 
ties as  well  as  repulsive  vices ;  possessing  courage,  a  knowl- 
edge of  men  and  of  business,  an  indomitable  will,  a  dispo- 
sition favorable  to  the  administration  of  justice  among  his 
subjects  ;  viewing  impunity  in  wrong  as  exclusively  a  royal 
prerogative.  Remorse,  fear,  a  consciousness  of  being  de- 
tected, disgust  with  life  and  horror  of  death — these  were  the 
sentiments  which  troubled  the  sick-couch  of  the  absolute 
king.  The  first  of  his  line  who  bore  the  epithet  of  "  the 
most  Christian,"  he  was  so  abandoned  to  egotism  that  he 
allowed  the  veins  of  children  to  be  opened,  and  greedily 
drank  their  blood ;  believing,  with  physicians  of  that  day, 
that  it  would  renovate  his  youth,  or  at  least  check  the  decay 
of  nature.  The  cruelty  was  useless.  At  last,  feeling  the 
approach  of  death  to  be  certain,  he  sent  for  an  anchorite 
from  Calabria,  since  revered  as  St.  Francis  de  Paula ;  and, 
when  the  hermit  arrived,  the  monarch  of  France  entreated 
him  to  spare  his  life.  He  threw  himself  at  the  feet  of  the 
man  who  was  believed  to  derive  healing  virtues  from  the 
sanctity  of  his  character ;  he  begged  the  intercession  of  his 
prayers ;  he  wept,  he  supplicated,  he  hoped  that  the  voice 
of  a  Calabrian  monk  would  reverse  the  order  of  nature,  and 
successfully  plead  for  his  respite. 

We  find  the  love  of  life  still  more  strongly  acknowledged 
by  an  English  poet,  who,  after  describing  our  being  as  the 
dream  of  a  shadow,  "  a  weak-built  isthmus  between  two 
eternities,  so  frail  that  it  can  sustain  neither  wind  nor  wave," 
yet  avows  his  preference  of  a  few  days',  nay,  of  a  few  hours' 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.   127 

longer  residence  upon  earth,  to  all  the  fame  which  poetry 

can  achieve. 

"  Fain  would  I  see  that  prodigal, 

Who  his  to-morrow  would  bestow, 
For  all  old  Homer's  life,  e'er  since  he  died,  till  now." 

We  do  not  believe  the  poet  sincere,  for  one  passion  may 
prevail  over  another,  and  in  many  a  breast  the  love  of  fame 
is  at  times,  if  not  always,  the  strongest.  But  if  those  who 
pass  their  lives  in  a  struggle  for  glory  may  desire  the  attain- 
ment of  their  object  at  any  price,  the  competitors  for  politi- 
cal power  are  apt  to  cling  fast  to  the  scene  of  their  rivalry. 
Lord  Castlereagh  could  indeed  commit  suicide ;  but  it  was 
not  from  disgust ;  his  mind  dwelt  on  the  precarious  condi- 
tion of  his  own  elevation,  and  the  unsuccessful  policy  in 
which  he  had  involved  his  country.  He  did  not  love  death ; 
he  did  not  contemplate  it  with  indifference ;  .he  failed  to 
observe  its  terrors,  because  his  attention  was  absorbed  by 
apprehensions  which  pressed  themselves  upon  him  with  un- 
relenting force. 

The  ship  of  the  Marquis  of  Badajoz,  Viceroy  of  Peru, 
was  set  on  fire  by  Captain  Stayner.  The  Marchioness,  and 
her  daughter,  who  was  betrothed  to  the  Duke  of  Medina- 
Celi,  swooned  in  the  flames,  and  could  not  be  rescued.  The 
Marquis  resigned  himself  also  to  die,  rather  than  survive 
with  the  memory  of  such  horrors.  It  was  not  that  he  was 
careless  of  life ;  the  natural  feelings  remained  unchanged ; 
the  love  of  grandeur,  the  pride  of  opulence  and  dominion  ; 
but  he  preferred  death,  because  that  was  out  of  sight,  and 
would  rescue  him  from  the  presence  of  absorbing  and  in- 
tolerable sorrows. 

Madame  de  Sevigne,  in  her  charming  letters,  gives  the 


i28    THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  'MEN. 

true  sensations  of  the  ambitious  man  when  suddenly  called 
to  leave  the  scenes  of  his  efforts  and  his  triumphs.  Rumor, 
with  its  wonted  credulity,  ascribed  to  Louvois,  the  powerful 
minister  of  Louis  XIV.,  the  crime  of  suicide.  His  death 
was  sudden,  but  not  by  his  own  arm ;  he  fell  a  victim,  if 
not  to  disease,  to  the  revenge  of  a  woman.  In  a  night  the 
most  energetic,  reckless  statesman  in  Europe,  passionately 
fond  of  place,  extending  his  influence  to  every  cabinet,  and 
embracing  in  his  views  the  destiny  of  continents,  was  called 
away.  How  much  business  was  arrested  in  progress !  how 
many  projects  defeated !  how  many  secrets  buried  in  the 
silence  of  the  grave !  Who  should  disentangle  the  interests 
which  his  policy  had  rendered  complicate  ?  Who  should 
terminate  the  wars  which  he  had  begun  ?  Who  should  fol- 
low up  the  blows  which  he  had  aimed  ?  Well  might  he 
have  exclaimed  to  the  angel  of  death :  u  Ah,  grant  me  a 
short  reprieve ;  spare  me  till  I  can  check  the  Duke  of  Sa- 
voy ;  checkmate  the  Prince  of  Orange !  " — "  No  !  no  !  You 
shall  not  have  a  single,  single  minute."  Death  is  as  in- 
exorable to  the  prayer  of  ambition  as  to  the  entreaty  of 
despair.  The  ruins  of  the  Palatinate,  the  wrongs  of  the 
Huguenots,  were  to  be  avenged;  and  Louvois,  like  Louis 
XI.  and  like  the  rest  of  mankind,  was  to  learn  that  the  pas- 
sion for  life,  whether  expressed  in  the  language  of  supersti- 
tion, of  abject  despondency,  or  of  the  desire  of  continued 
power,  could  not  prolong  existence  for  a  moment. 

But,  though  the  love  of  life  may  be  declared  a  universal 
instinct,  it  does  not  follow  that  death  is  usually  met  with 
abjectness.  It  belongs  to  virtue  and  to  manliness  to  accept 
the  inevitable  decree  with  firmness.  It  is  often  sought  vol- 
untarily, but  even  then  the  latent  passion  is  discernible.  A 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.    129 

sense  of  shame,  a  desire  of  plunder,  a  hope  of  emolument — 
these,  not  less  than  a  sense  of  duty,  are  motives  sufficient  to 
influence  men  to  defy  all  danger;  yet  the  feeling  for  self- 
preservation  does  not  cease  to  exert  its  power.     The  com- 
mon  hireling   soldier   contracts   to  expose  himself  to  the 
deadly  fire  of  a  hostile  army  whenever  his  employers  may 
command  it ;  he  does  it,  in  a  controversy  of  which  he  knows 
not  the  merits,  for  a  party  to  which  he  is  essentially  indiffer- 
ent, for  purposes  which,  perhaps,  if  his  mind  were  enlight- 
ened, he  would  labor  to  counteract.     The  life  of  the  soldier 
is  a  life  of  contrast ;  of  labor  and  idleness ;  it  is  a  course  of 
routine,  easy  to  be  endured,  and  leading  only  at  intervals  to 
exposure.     The  love  of  ease,  the  certainty  of  obtaining  the 
means   of  existence,  the   remoteness  of  peril,  conspire  to 
tempt  adventurers,  and  the  armies  of  Europe  have  never 
suffered  from  any  other  limit  than  the  wants  of  the  treasury. 
But  the  same  soldier  would  fly  precipitately  from  any  hazard 
which  he  had  not  bargained  to  encounter.     The  merchant 
will  visit  the  deadliest  climates  in  pursuit  of  gain ;  he  will 
pass  over  regions  where  the  air  is  known  to  be  corrupt,  and 
disease  to  have  anchored  itself  in  the  hot,  heavy  atmosphere. 
And  this  he  will  attempt  repeatedly,  and  with  firmness,  in 
defiance  of  the  crowds  of  corpses  which  he  may  see  carried 
by  wagon-loads  to  the  graveyards.     But  the  same  merchant 
would  be  struck  by  panic  and  desert  his  own  residence  in 
a  more  favored  clime,  should  it  be  invaded  by  epidemic 
disease.     He  who  would  fearlessly  meet  the  worst  forms  of 
a  storm  at  sea,  and  take  his  chance  of  escaping  the  fever  as 
he  passed  through  New  Orleans,  would  shun  New  York  in 
the  season  of  the  cholera,  and  shrink  from  any  danger  which 
was  novel  and  unexpected.     The  widows  of  India  ascend 
9 


130 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 


the  funeral-pile  with  a  fortitude  which  man  could  never 
display,  and  emulously  yield  up  their  lives  to  a  barbarous 
usage  which,  if  men  had  been  called  upon  to  endure  it, 
would  never  have  been  perpetuated.  Yet  is  it  to  be  sup- 
posed that  these  unhappy  victims  are  indifferent  to  the 
charms  of  existence,  or  blind  to  the  terrors  of  its  extinction  ? 
Calmly  as  they  may  lay  themselves  upon  the  pyre,  they 
would  beg  for  mercy  were  their  execution  to  be  demanded 
in  any  other  way ;  they  would  confess  their  fear  were  it  not 
that  love  and  honor  and  custom  confirm  their  doom. 

No  class  of  men  in  the  regular  discharge  of  duty  incur 
danger  more  frequently  than  the  honest  physician.  There 
is  no  type  of  malignant  maladies  with  which  he  fails  to  be- 
come acquainted,  no  hospital  so  crowded  with  contagion 
that  he  dares  not  walk  freely  through  its  wards.  His  voca- 
tion is  among  the  sick  and  the  dying;  he  is  the  familiar 
friend  of  those  who  are  sinking  under  infectious  disease ; 
and  he  never  shrinks  from  the  horror  of  observing  it  under 
all  its  aspects.  He  must  do  so  with  equanimity ;  as  he  in- 
hales the  poisoned  atmosphere,  he  must  coolly  reflect  on 
the  medicines  which  may  mitigate  the  sufferings  that  he  can 
not  remedy.  Nay,  after  death  has  ensued,  he  must  search 
with  the  dissecting-knife  for  its  hidden  cause,  if  so  by  mul- 
tiplying his  own  perils  he  may  discover  some  alleviation  for 
the  afflictions  of  others.  And  why  is  this?  Because  the 
physician  is  indifferent  to  death  ?  Because  he  is  steeled 
and  hardened  against  the  fear  of  it  ?  Because  he  despises 
or  pretends  to  despise  it  ?  By  no  means.  It  is  his  especial 
business  to  value  life,  to  cherish  the  least  spark  of  animated 
existence.  And  the  habit  of  caring  for  the  lives  of  his 
fellow  men  is  far  from  leading  him  to  an  habitual  indiffer- 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.    13  x 

ence  to  his  own.  The  physician  shuns  every  danger  but 
such  as  the  glory  of  his  profession  commands  him  to  defy. 

Thus  we  are  led  to  explain  the  anomaly  of  suicide,  and 
reconcile  the  apparent  contradiction  of  a  terror  of  death, 
which  is  yet  voluntarily  encountered.  It  may  seem  a  para- 
dox ;  but  the  dread  of  dying  has  itself  sometimes  prompted 
suicide,  and  the  man  who  seeks  to  destroy  himself,  at  the 
very  moment  of  perpetrating  his  crime  betrays  the  passion 
for  life.  Menace  him 'with  death  under  a  different  form 
from  that  which  he  has  chosen,  and,  like  other  men,  he  will 
get  out  of  its  way.  He  will  defend  himself  against  the  as- 
sassin, though  he  might  be  ready  to  cut  his  own  throat ;  he 
will,  if  at  sea,  and  the  ship  were  sinking  in  a  storm,  labor 
with  his  whole  strength  to  save  it  from  going  down,  even  if 
he  had  formed  the  design  to  leap  into  the  ocean  in  the  first 
moment  of  a  calm.  Place  him  in  the  van  of  an  army,  it  is 
by  no  means  certain  that  he  will  not  prove  a  coward ;  tell 
him  the  cholera  is  about  to  rage,  and  he  will  deluge  himself 
with  preventive  remedies  ;  send  him  to  a  house  visited  with 
yellow  fever,  and  he  will  steep  himself  in  vinegar  and  carry 
with  him  an  atmosphere  of  camphor.  It  is  only  under  the 
one  form,  which  the  mind  in  some  insane  excitement  may 
have  chosen,  that  he  preserves  the  desire  to  leave  the  world. 

It  will  not  be  difficult,  then,  to  set  a  right  value  on  the 
declaration  of  those  who  profess  to  regard  death  not  with 
indifference  merely  but  with  contempt.  It  is  pure  affecta- 
tion, or  the  indulgence  of  a  vulgar  levity ;  and  must  excite 
either  compassion  or  disgust,  according  as  it  is  marked  by 
the  spirit  of  fiendish  scoffing  or  of  human  vanity  and  self- 
deception.  A  French  moralist  tells  us  of  a  valet  who  danced 
merrily  on  the  scaffold,  where  he  was  to  be  broken  on  the 


I32 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 


wheel.  A  New  England  woman,  belonging  to  a  family  which 
esteemed  itself  one  of  the  first,  was  convicted  of  aiding  her 
paramour  to  kill  her  husband.  She  was  a  complete  sensu- 
alist, one  to  whom  life  was  everything,  and  the  loss  of  it  the 
total  shipwreck  of  everything.  On  her  way  to  the  place  of 
execution  she  was  accompanied  by  a  clergyman  of  no  very 
great  ability ;  and  all  along  the  road,  with  the  gallows  in 
plain  sight,  she  amused  herself  in  teasing  the  good  man, 
whose  wits  were  no  match  for  her  raillery.  He  had  been 
buying  a  new  chaise,  quite  an  event  in  the  life  of  a  humble 
country  pastor,  and  when  he  spoke  of  the  next  world  she 
would  amuse  herself  in  praising  his  purchase.  If  he  deplored 
her  fate  and  her  prospects,  she  would  grieve  at  his  exposure 
to  the  inclement  weather,  and  laughed  and  chatted  as  if  she 
had  been  driving  to  a  wedding  and  not  to  her  own  funeral. 
And  why  was  this  ?  Because  death  was  not  feared  ?  No ; 
"but  because  death  was  feared,  and  feared  intensely.  The 
Eastern  women,  who  are  burned  alive  with  their  deceased 
husbands,  often  utter  shrieks  that  would  pierce  the  hearers 
to  the  soul ;  and,  to  prevent  a  compassion  which  would  en- 
danger the  reign  of  superstition,  the  priests,  with  drums  and 
cymbals,  drown  the  terrific  cries  of  their  victims.  So  it  is 
with  those  who  go  to  the  court  of  the  King  of  Terrors  with 
merriment  on  their  lips.  They  dread  his  presence,  and  they 
seek  to  drown  the  noise  of  his  approaching  footsteps  by  the 
sound  of  their  own  ribaldry.  If  the  scaffold  often  rings  with 
a  jest,  it  is  because  the  mind  shrinks  from  the  solemnity  of 
the  impending  change. 

Perhaps  the  most  common  device  for  averting  contem- 
plation from  death  itself  is,  in  directing  it  to  the  manner  of 
dying.  Vanitas  vanitatum !  Vanity  does  not  give  up  its 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.    133 

hold  on  the  last  hour.  Men  wish  to  die  with  distinction,  to 
be  buried  in  state ;  and  the  last  thoughts  are  employed  on 
the  decorum  of  the  moment,  or  in  the  anticipation  of  funeral 
splendors.  It  was  no  uncommon  thing  among  the  Romans 
for  a  rich  man  to  appoint  an  heir,  on  condition  that  his  ob- 
sequies should  be  celebrated  with  costly  pomp.  "  When  I 
am  dead,"  said  an  Indian  chief,  who  fell  into  his  last  sleep 
at  Washington — "  when  I  am  dead  let  the  big  guns  be  fired 
over  me."  »The  words  were  thought  worthy  of  being  en- 
graved on  his  tomb ;  but  they  are  no  more  than  a  plain  ex- 
pression of  a  very  common  passion ;  the  same  which  leads 
the  humblest  to  desire  that  at  least  a  stone  may  be  placed 
at  the  head  of  his  grave,  and  demands  the  erection  of  splen- 
did mausoleums  and  costly  tombs  for  the  mistaken  men — 

"  Who  by  the  proofs  of  death  pretend  to  live." 

Among  the  ancients,  an  opulent  man,  while  yet  in  health, 
would  order  his  own  sarcophagus;  and  nowadays  the  wealthy 
sometimes  build  their  own  tombs,  for  the  sake  of  securing  a 
satisfactory  monument.  A  vain  man,  who  had  done  this  at 
a  great  expense,  showed  his  motive  so  plainly  that  his  neigh- 
bors laughed  with  the  sexton  of  the  parish,  who  wished  that 
the  builder  might  not  be  kept  long  out  of  the  interest  of  his 
money. 

But  it  is  not  merely  in  the  decorations  of  the  grave  that 
vanity  is  displayed.  Saladin,  in  his  last  illness,  instead  of  his 
usual  standard,  ordered  his  shroud  to  be  uplifted  in  front  of 
his  tent ;  and  the  herald,  who  hung  out  this  winding-sheet 
as  a  flag,  was  commanded  to  exclaim  aloud  :  "  Behold  !  this 
is  all  which  Saladin,  the  vanquisher  of  the  East,  carries  away 
of  all  his  conquests."  He  was  wrong  there.  He  came  naked 


i34    THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 

into  the  world,  and  he  left  it  naked.  Grave-clothes  were  a 
superfluous  luxury,  and,  to  the  person  receiving  them,  as 
barren  of  comfort  as  his  scepter  or  his  scimitar.  Saladin  was 
vain.  He  sought  in  dying  to  contrast  the  power  he  had  en- 
joyed with  the  feebleness  of  his  condition  ;  to  pass  from  the 
world  in  a  striking  antithesis;  to  make  his  death-scene  an 
epigram.  All  was  vanity. 

A  century  ago  it  was  the  fashion  for  culprits  to  appear 
on  the  scaffold  in  the  dress  of  dandies.  Some  centuries 
before  it  was  the  privilege  of  noblemen,  if  they  merited 
hanging,  to  escape  the  gallows  and  perish  on  the  block. 
The  Syrian  priests  had  foretold  to  the  emperor  Helio- 
gabalus  that  he  would  be  reduced  to  the  necessity  of 
committing  suicide ;  believing  them  true  prophets,  he  kept 
in  readiness  silken  cords  and  a  sword  of  gold.  Admirable 
privilege  of  the  nobility,  to  be  beheaded  instead  of  hanged ! 
Enviable  prerogative  of  imperial  dignity,  to  be  strangled 
with  a  knot  of  silk  or  to  be  assassinated  with  a  golden 
sword ! 

" '  Odious !  in  woolen !  'twould  a  saint  provoke  ' 
(Were  the  last  words  that  poor  Narcissa  spoke). 
'  No,  let  a  charming  chintz  and  Brussels  lace 
Wrap  my  cold  limbs  and  shade  my  lifeless  face ; 
One  would  not  sure  be  frightful  when  one's  dead, 
And — Betty — give  this  cheek  a  little  red.' " 

The  example  chosen  by  the  poet  extended  to  appear- 
ances after  death ;  for  the  presence  of  the  same  weakness 
in  the  hour  of  mortality  we  must  look  to  the  precincts 
of  courts,  where  folly  used  to  reign  by  prescriptive  right ; 
where  caprice  gives  law  and  pleasures  consume  life.  There 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.    135 

you  may  witness  the  harlot's  euthanasia.  The  French 
court  was  at  Choisy  when  Madame  de  Pompadour  felt 
the  pangs  of  a  fatal  malady.  It  had  been  the  established 
etiquette  that  none  but  princes  and  persons  of  royal  blood 
should  breathe  their  last  in  Versailles.  Proclaim  to  the 
gay  circles  of  Paris  that  a  thing  new  and  unheard-of  is  to 
be  permitted!  Announce  to  the  world  that  the  rules  of 
palace  propriety  and  Bourbon  decorum  are  to  be  broken ! 
that  the  chambers  where  vice  had  fearlessly  lived  and 
laughed,  but  never  been  permitted  to  expire,  were  to  admit 
the  novel  spectacle  of  the  King's  favorite  mistress  struggling 
with  death ! 

The  Marchioness  questioned  the  physicians  firmly ;  she 
perceived  their  hesitation ;  she  saw  the  hand  that  beckoned 
her  away ;  and  she  determined,  says  the  historian,  to  depart 
in  the  pomp  of  a  queen.  Louis  XV.,  himself  not  capable 
of  a  strong  emotion,  was  yet  willing  to  concede  to  his 
dying  friend  the  consolation  which  she  coveted,  the  oppor- 
tunity to  reign  till  her  parting  gasp.  The  courtiers  thronged 
round  the  death-bed  of  a  woman  who  distributed  favors 
with  the  last  exhalations  of  her  breath ;  and  the  King  hur- 
ried to  name  to  public  offices  the  persons  whom  her  falter- 
ing accents  recommended.  Her  sick-room  became  a  scene 
of  state ;  the  princes  and  grandees  still  entered  to  pay  their 
homage  to  the  woman  whose  power  did  not  yield  to  mortal 
disease,  and  were  surprised  to  find  her  richly  attired.  The 
traces  of  death  in  her  countenance  were  concealed  by 
rouge.  She  reclined  on  a  splendid  couch ;  questions  of 
public  policy  were  discussed  by  ministers  in  her  presence; 
she  gloried  in  holding  to  the  end  the  reins  of  the  kingdom 
in  her  hands.  Even  a  sycophant  clergy  showed  respect  to 


I 

136    THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 

the  expiring  favorite,  and  felt  no  shame  at  sanctioning  with 
their  frequent  visits  the  vices  of  a  woman  who  had  entered 
the  palace  only  as  an  adulteress.  Having  complied  with 
the  rites  of  the  Roman  Church,  she  next  sought  the  appro- 
bation of  the  philosophers.  She  lisped  no  word  of  peni- 
tence ;  she  shed  no  tears  of  regret.  The  Curate  left  her  as 
she  was  in  the  agony.  "  Wait  a  moment,"  said  she ;  "  we 
will  leave  the  house  together." 

The  dying  mistress  was  worshiped  while  she  breathed ; 
hardly  was  she  dead  when  the  scene  changed  :  two  domes- 
tics carried  out  her  body  on  a  hand-barrow  from  the  palace 
to  her  private  home.  The  King  stood  at  the  window  look- 
ing at  the  clouds  as  her  remains  were  carried  by.  "  The  Mar- 
chioness," said  he,  "will  have  bad  weather  on  her  journey." 

The  flickering  lamp  blazes  with  unusual  brightness  just 
as  it  goes  out.  "The  fit  gives  vigor,  as  it  destroys."  He 
who  has  but  a  moment  remaining  is  released  from  the  com- 
mon motives  'for  dissimulation ;  and  Time,  that  lays  his 
hand  on  everything  else,  destroying  beauty,  undermining 
health,  and  wasting  the  powers  of  life,  spares  the  ruling 
passion,  which  is  connected  with  the  soul  itself.  That 
passion 

"  .  .  .  .  sticks  to  our  last  sand. 
Consistent  in  our  follies  and  our  sins, 
Here  honest  Nature  ends  as  she  begins." 

Napoleon  expired  during  the  raging  of  a  whirlwind,  and 
his  last  words  showed  that  his  thoughts  were  in  the  battle- 
field. The  meritorious  author  of  the  "  Memoir  of  Cabot," 
a  work  which  in  accuracy  and  in  extensive  research  is  very 
far  superior  to  most  late  treatises  on  maritime  discovery, 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 


137 


tells  us  that  the  discoverer  of  our  continent,  in  an  halluci- 
nation before  his  death,  believed  himself  again  on  the  ocean, 
once  more  steering  in  quest  of  adventure  over  waves  which 
knew  him  as  the  steed  knows  its  rider.  How  many  a  gentle 
eye  has  been  dimmed  with  tears  as  it  read  the  fabled  fate 
of  Fergus  Maclvor !  Not  inferior  to  the  admirable  hero  of 
the  romance  was  the  Marquis  of  Montrose,  who  had  fought 
for  the  Stuarts  and  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Presbyterians. 
His  head  and  his  limbs  were  ordered  to  be  severed  from 
his  body,  and  to  be  hanged  on  the  Tolbooth  in  Edinburgh 
and  in  other  public  towns  of  the  kingdom.  He  listened  to 
the  sentence  with  the  pride  of  loyalty  and  the  fierce  anger 
of  a  generous  defiance.  "  I  wish,"  he  exclaimed,  "  I  had 
flesh  enough  to  be  sent  to  every  city  in  Christendom,  as  a 
testimony  to  the  cause  for  which  I  suffer." 

But  let  us  take  an  example  of  sublimer  virtue,  such  as 
we  find  in  a  statesman  who  lived  without  a  stain  from  youth 
to  maturity,  and  displayed  an  unwavering  consistency  to 
the  last ;  a  hero  in  civil  life,  who  was  in  some  degree  our 
own.  It  becomes  America  to  take  part  in  rescuing  from 
undeserved  censure  the  names  and  the  memory  of  victims 
to  the  unconquerable  love  of  republican  liberty. 

"  Vane,  young  in  years,  in  counsel  old  :  to  know 
Both  spiritual  power  and  civil,  what  each  means, 

What  severs  each,  thou'st  learned,  which  few  have  done. 
The  bounds  of  either  sword  to  thee  we  owe ; 

Therefore  on  thy  firm  hand  Religion  leans 
In  peace,  and  reckons  thee  her  eldest  son." 

He  that  would  discern  the  difference  between  magnani- 
mous genius  and  a  shallow  wit  may  compare  this  splendid 


138    THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 

eulogy  of  Milton  with  the  superficial  levity  in  the  commen- 
tary of  Warton.  It  is  a  fashion  to  call  Sir  Heiwry  Vane  a 
fanatic.  And  what  is  fanaticism  ?  True,  he  was  a  rigid 
Calvinist.  True,  he  has  written  an  obscure  book  on  the 
mystery  of  godliness,  of  which  all  that  we  understand  is 
excellent,  and  we  may  therefore  infer  that  the  vein  of  the 
rest  is  good.  But  does  this  prove  him  a  fanatic  ?  If  to  be 
the  uncompromising  defender  of  civil  and  religious  liberty 
be  fanaticism ;  if  to  forgive  injuries  be  fanaticism ;  if  to  be- 
lieve that  the  mercy  of  God  extends  to  all  his  creatures,  and 
may  reach  even  the  angels  of  darkness,  be  fanaticism ;  if  to 
have  earnestly  supported  in  the  Long  Parliament  the  free- 
dom of  conscience ;  if  to  have  repeatedly,  boldly,  and  zeal- 
ously interposed  to  check  the  persecution  of  Roman  Catho- 
lics ;  if  to  have  labored  that  the  sect  which  he  least  approved 
should  enjoy  their  property  in  security  and  be  safe  from  all 
penal  enactments  for  nonconformity ;  if  in  his  public  life 
to  have  pursued  a  career  of  firm,  conscientious,  disinterested 
consistency,  never  wavering,  never  trimming,  never  chang- 
ing— if  all  this  be  fanaticism,  then  was  Sir  Harry  Vane  a 
fanatic.  Not  otherwise.  The  people  of  Massachusetts  de- 
clined to  continue  him  in  office  ;  and  when  his  power  in 
England  was  great,  he  requited  the  colony  with  the  benefits 
of  his  favoring  influence.  He  resisted  the  arbitrariness  of 
Charles  I.,  but  would  not  sit  as  one  of  his  judges.  He  op- 
posed the  tyranny  of  Cromwell.  When  that  extraordinary 
man  entered  the  House  of  Commons  to  break  up  the  Par- 
liament which  was  about  to  pass  laws  that  would  have  en- 
dangered his  supremacy,  Vane  rebuked  him  for  his  purpose 
of  treason.  When  the  musketeers  invaded  the  hall  of  de- 
bate, and  others  were  silent,  Vane  exclaimed  to  the  most 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.    139 

despotic  man  in  Europe  :  "  This  is  not  honest.  It  is  against 
morality  and  common  honesty."  Well  might  Cromwell,  since 
his  designs  were  criminal,  reply :  "  Sir  Henry  Vane !  Sir 
Henry  Vane  !  The  Lord  deliver  me  from  Sir  Henry 
Vane !  " 

Though  Vane  suffered  from  the  usurpation  of  the  Pro- 
tector, he  lived  to  see  the  Restoration.  On  the  return  of 
the  Stuarts,  like  Lafayette  among  the  Bourbons,  he  remained 
the  stanch  enemy  of  tyranny.  The  austere  patriot  whom 
Cromwell  had  feared  struck  terror  into  the  hearts  of  a  faith- 
less and  licentious  court.  It  was  resolved  to  destroy  him. 
In  a  different  age  or  country  the  poisoned  cup,  or  the  knife 
of  the  assassin,  might  have  been  used ;  in  that  season  of 
corrupt  influence  a  judicial  murder  was  resolved  upon.  His 
death  was  a  deliberate  crime,  contrary  to  the  royal  promise ; 
contrary  to  the  express  vote  of  "the  healing  Parliament"; 
contrary  to  law,  to  equity,  to  the  evidence.  But  it  suited 
the  designs  of  a  monarch  who  feared  to  be  watched  by  a 
statesman  of  incorruptible  elevation  of  character.  The 
night  before  his  execution  he  enjoyed  the  society  of  his 
family  as  if  he  had  been  reposing  in  his  own  mansion.  The 
next  morning  he  was  beheaded.  The  least  concession  would 
have  saved  him.  If  he  had  only  consented  to  deny  the 
supremacy  of  Parliament  the  King  would  have  restrained 
the  malignity  of  his  hatred.  "  Ten  thousand  deaths  for 
me,"  exclaimed  Vane,  "  ere  I  will  stain  the  purity  of  my 
conscience."  Historians  report  that  life  was  dear  to  him; 
he  submitted  to  his  end  with  the  firmness  of  a  patriot,  the 
serenity  of  a  Christian. 

"  '  I  give  and  I  devise '  (old  Euclio  said, 

And  sighed)  '  my  lands  and  tenements  to  Ned.' 


I4o    THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 

'  Your  money,  sir  ? '     '  My  money,  sir !  what,  all  ? 
'  Why,  if  I  must '  (then  wept),  '  I  give  it  Paul.' 
'  The  manor,  sir  ?  '     '  The  manor  !  hold,'  he  cried, 
'  Not  that — I  can  not  part  with  that ' — and  died." 

Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  upon  his  death-bed,  sent  for  Savo- 
narola to  receive  his  confession  and  grant  him  absolution. 
The  severe  anchorite  questioned  the  dying  sinner  with  un- 
sparing rigor.  "  Do  you  believe  entirely  in  the  mercy  of 
God?"  "Yes,  I  feel  it  in  my  heart."  "Are  you  truly 
ready  to  restore  all  the  possessions  and  estates  which  you 
have  unjustly  acquired?"  The  dying  Duke  hesitated;  he 
counted  up  in  his  mind  the  sums  which  he  had  hoarded ; 
delusion  whispered  that  nearly  all  had  been  so  honestly 
gained  that  the  sternest  censor  would  strike  but  little  from 
his  opulence.  The  pains  of  hell  were  threatened  if  he 
denied,  and  he  gathered  courage  to  reply  that  he  was  ready 
to  make  restitution.  Once  more  the  unyielding  priest  re- 
sumed his  inquisition.  "  Will  you  resign  the  sovereignty  of 
Florence,  and  restore  the  democracy  of  the  republic  ?  " 
Lorenzo,  like  Macbeth,  had  acquired  a  crown ;  but,  unlike 
Macbeth,  he  saw  sons  of  his  own  about  to  become  his  suc- 
cessors. He  gloried  in  the  hope  of  being  the  father  of 
princes,  the  founder  of  a  line  of  hereditary  sovereigns. 
Should  he  crush  this  brilliant  expectation  and  tremble  at 
the  wild  words  of  a  visionary  ?  Should  he  who  had  reigned 
as  a  monarch  stoop  to  die  as  a  merchant?  No!  though 
hell  itself  were  opening  beneath  his  bed.  "  Not  that !  I 
can  not  part  with  that."  Savonarola  left  his  bedside  with 
indignation,  and  Lorenzo  died  without  shrift. 

"  And  you,  brave  Cobham,  to  the  latest  breath, 
Shall  feel  your  ruling  passion  strong  in  death, 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.    141 

Such  in  those  moments,  as  in  all  the  past — 

'  Oh,  save  my  country,  Heaven  ! '  shall  be  your  last." 

Like  this  was  the  exclamation  of  the  patriot  Quincy, 
whose  virtues  have  been  fitly  commemorated  by  the  pious 
reverence  of  his  son.  The  celebrated  Admiral  Blake 
breathed  his  last  as  he  came  in  sight  of  England,  happy  in 
at  least  descrying  the  land  of  which  he  had  advanced  the 
glory  by  his  brilliant  victories.  Quincy  died  as  he  ap- 
proached the  coast  of  Massachusetts.  He  loved  his  family  ; 
but  at  that  moment  he  gave  his  whole  soul  to  the  cause  of 
freedom.  "  Oh,  that  I  might  live  " — it  was  his  dying  wish — 
"  to  render  to  my  country  one  last  service !  " 

The  coward  falls  panic-stricken  ;  the  superstitious  man 
dies  with  visions  of  terror  floating  before  his  fancy.  It  has 
even  happened  that  a  man  has  been  in  such  dread  of  eternal 
woe  as  to  cut  his  throat  in  his  despair.  The  phenomenon 
seems  strange  ;  but  the  fact  is  unquestionable.  The  giddy, 
that  are  near  a  precipice,  totter  toward  the  brink  which 
they  would  shun.  Everybody  remembers  the  atheism  and 
bald  sensuality  of  the  septuagenarian  Alexander  VI. ;  and 
the  name  of  his  natural  son,  Caesar  Borgia,  is  a  proverb,  as  a 
synonym  for  the  most  vicious  selfishness.  Let  one  tale,  of 
which  Macchiavelli  attests  the  truth,  set  forth  the  deep  base- 
ness of  a  cowardly  nature.  Borgia  had,  by  the  most  solemn 
oaths,  induced  the  Duke  of  Gravina,  Oliverotto,  Vitellozzo 
Vitelli,  and  another,  to  meet  him  in  Sinigaglia,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  forming  a  treaty,  and  then  issued  the  order  for  the 
massacre  of  Oliverotto  and  Vitelli.  Can  it  be  believed  ? 
Vitelli,  as  he  expired,  begged  of  the  infamous  Borgia,  his  as- 
sassin, to  obtain  of  Alexander  a  dispensation  for  his  omis- 
sions, a  release  from  purgatory. 


i42    THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 

The  death-bed  of  Cromwell  himself  was  not  free  from 
superstition.  When  near  his  end,  he  asked  if  the  elect  could 
never  fall.  "  Never,"  replied  Godwin  the  preacher.  "  Then 
I  am  safe,"  said  the  man  whose  last  years  had  been  stained 
by  cruelty  and  tyranny ;  "  for  I  am  sure  I  was  once  in  a 
state  of  grace." 

Ximenes  languished  from  disappointment  at  the  loss  of 
power  and  the  want  of  royal  favor.  A  smile  from  Louis 
would  have  cheered  the  death-bed  of  Racine. 

In  a  brave  mind  the  love  of  honor  endures  to  the  last. 
"  Don't  give  up  the  ship ! "  cried  Lawrence,  as  his  life-blood 
was  flowing  in  torrents.  Abimelech  groaned  that  he  fell  ig- 
nobly by  the  hand  of  a  woman.  We  have  ever  admired  the 
gallant  death  of  Sir  Richard  Grenville,  who,  in  a  single  ship, 
encountered  a  numerous  fleet ;  and,  when  mortally  wounded, 
husbanded  his  strength  till  he  could  summon  his  victors  to 
bear  testimony  to  his  courage  and  his  patriotism.  "  Here 
die  I,  Richard  Grenville,  with  a  joyous  and  quiet  mind,  for 
that  I  have  ended  my  life  as  a  true  soldier  ought  to  do, 
fighting  for  his  country,  queen,  religion,  and  honor." 

The  public  has  been  instructed  through  the  press  in  the 
details  of  the  treason  of  Benedict  Arnold,  by  an  inquirer, 
who  has  compassed  earth  and  sea  in  search  of  historic  truth, 
and  has  merited  the  applause  of  his  country,  not  less  for 
candor  and  judgment,  than  for  diligence  and  ability.  The 
victim  of  the  intrigue  was  Andre.  The  mind  of  the  young 
soldier  revolted  at  the  service  of  treachery  in  which  he  had 
become  involved,  and,  holding  a  stain  upon  honor  to  be 
worse  than  the  forfeiture  of  life,  he  shuddered  at  the  sight 
of  the  gallows,  but  not  at  the  thought  of  dying.  He  felt  the 
same  sentiment  which  made  death  welcome  to  Nelson  and 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.    143 

to  Wolfe,  to  whom  it  came  with  glory  and  victory  for  its 
companions ;  but  for  Andre  the  keen  sense  of  honor  added 
bitterness  to  the  cup  of  affliction  by  exciting  fear  lest  the 
world  should  take  the  manner  of  his  execution  as  evidence 
of  merited  opprobrium. 

Finally :  he  who  has  a  good  conscience  and  a  well-bal- 
anced mind  meets  death  with  calmness,  resignation,  and  hope. 
Saint  Louis  died  among  the  ruins  of  Carthage — a  Christian 
king,  laboring  in  vain  to  expel  the  religion  of  Mohammed 
from  the  spot  where  Dido  had  planted  the  gods  of  Syria. 
"  My  friends,"  said  he,  "  I  have  finished  my  course.  Do 
not  mourn  for  me.  It  is  natural  that  I,  as  your  chief  and 
leader,  should  go  before  you.  You  must  follow  me.  Keep 
yourselves  in  readiness  for  the  journey."  Then,  giving  his 
son  his  blessing  and  the  best  advice,  he  received  the  sacra- 
ment, closed  his  eyes,  and  died  as  he  was  repeating  from  the 
Psalms  :  "  I  will  come  into  thy  house ;  I  will  worship  in  thy 
holy  temple." 

The  Curate  of  St.  Sulpice  asked  the  confessor  who  had 
shrived  Montesquieu  on  his  death-bed  if  the  penitent  had 
given  satisfaction.  "  Yes,"  replied  Father  Roust,  "  like  a  man 
of  genius."  The  Curate  was  displeased;  unwilling  to  leave 
the  dying  man  a  moment  of  tranquillity,  he  addressed  him, 
"  Sir,  are  you  truly  conscious  of  the  greatness  of  God  ?  " 
"  Yes,"  said  the  departing  philosopher,  "  and  of  the  littleness 
of  man." 

How  calm  were  the  last  moments  of  Cuvier  !  Benevo- 
lence of  feeling  and  self-possession  diffused  serenity  round 
the  hour  of  his  passing  away.  Confident  that  the  hand  of 
death  was  upon  him,  he  yet  submitted  to  the  application  of 
remedies,  that  he  might  gratify  his  more  hopeful  friends. 


I44    THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN. 

They  had  recourse  to  leeches  ;  and  with  delightful  simplicity 
the  great  naturalist  observed,  //  was  he  who  had  discovered 
that  leeches  possess  red  blood.  The  discovery,  which  he  made 
in  his  youth,  had  been  communicated  to  the  public  in  the 
memoir  that  first  gained  him  celebrity.  The  thoughts  of  the 
dying  naturalist  recurred  to  the  scenes  of  his  early  life,  to 
the  coast  of  Normandy,  where,  in  the  solitude  of  conscious 
genius,  he  had  roamed  by  the  side  of  the  ocean,  and  achieved 
fame  by  observing  the  wonders  of  animal  life  which  are 
nourished  in  its  depths.  He  remembered  his  years  of  pov- 
erty, the  sullen  rejection  which  his  first  claims  for  advance- 
ment had  received,  and  all  the  vicissitudes  through  which 
he  had  been  led  to  the  highest  distinctions  in  science.  The 
son  of  the  Wiirtemberg  soldier,  of  too  feeble  a  frame  to  em- 
brace the  profession  of  his  father,  had  found  his  way  to  the 
secrets  of  nature.  The  man  who,  in  his  own  province,  had 
been  refused  the  means  of  becoming  the  village  pastor  of  an 
ignorant  peasantry,  had  succeeded  in  charming  the  most 
polished  circles  of  Paris  by  the  clearness  of  his  descriptions, 
and  commanding  the  attention  of  the  Deputies  of  France  by 
the  grace  and  fluency  of  his  elocution.  And  now  he  was 
calmly  predicting  his  departure  ;  his  respiration  became 
rapid,  and  his  head  fell  as  if  he  were  in  meditation.  Thus 
his  soul  passed  to  its  Creator  without  a  struggle.  "  Those 
who  entered  afterward  would  have  thought  that  the  noble 
old  man,  seated  in  his  arm-chair  by  the  fireplace,  was 
asleep,  and  would  have  walked  softly  across  the  room 
for  fear  of  disturbing  him."  Heaven  had  but  "recalled  its 
own." 

The  death  of  Haller  himself  was  equally  tranquil.    When 
its  hour  approached,  he  watched  the  ebbing  of  life  and  con- 


THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  EMINENT  MEN.    145 

tinned  to  observe  the  beating  of  his  pulse  till  sensation  was 
gone. 

A  tranquil  death  becomes  the  man  of  science,  or  the 
scholar.  He  should  cultivate  letters  to  the  last  moment  of 
life  ;  he  should  resign  public  honors  as  calmly  as  one  would 
take  off  a  domino  on  returning  from  a  mask.  He  should 
listen  to  the  signal  for  his  departure,  not  with  exultation, 
and  not  with  indifference.  Respecting  the  dread  solemnity 
of  the  change,  and  reposing  in  hope  on  the  bosom  of  death, 
he  should  pass,  without  boldness  and  without  fear,  from  the 
struggles  of  inquiry  to  the  certainty  of  knowledge,  from  a 
world  of  doubt  to  a  world  of  truth. 
10 


PETER    THE   GREAT* 


ONE  day,  in  the  year  1697,  the  great  Duke  of  Marl- 
borough  happened  to  be  in  the  village  of  Saardam.  He 
visited  the  dockyard  of  one  Mynheer  Calf,  a  rich  ship- 
builder, and  was  struck  with  the  appearance  of  a  jour- 
neyman at  work  there.  He  was  a  large,  powerful  man, 
dressed  in  a  red  woolen  shirt  and  duck  trousers,  with  a 
sailor's  hat,  and  seated,  with  an  adze  in  his  hand,  upon  a 
rough  log  of  timber  which  lay  on  the  ground.  The  man's 
features  were  bold  and  regular,  his  dark  brown  hair  fell  in 
natural  curls  about  his  neck,  his  complexion  was  strong  and 
ruddy,  with  veins  somewhat  distended,  indicating  an  ardent 
temperament  and  more  luxurious  habits  than  comported 
with  his  station ;  and  his  dark,  keen  eye  glanced  from  one 
object  to  another  with  remarkable  restlessness.  He  was 
engaged  in  earnest  conversation  with  some  strangers,  whose 
remarks  he  occasionally  interrupted,  while  he  rapidly  ad- 
dressed them  in  a  guttural  but  not  unmusical  voice.  As  he 
became  occasionally  excited  in  conversation,  his  features 

*  i.  La  Russia  en  1839.  Par  le  Marquis  de  Custine.  4  vols. 
Seconde  edition,  revue,  corrigee,  et  augmentee.  Paris.  1843. 

2.  A  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Peter  the  Great.  By  John  Barrow,  Esq., 
Secretary  to  the  Admiralty.  New  York  :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1839. 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  I47 

twitched  convulsively,  the  blood  rushed  to  his  forehead,  his 
arms  were  tossed  about  with  extreme  violence  of  gesticula- 
tion, and  he  seemed  constantly  upon  the  point  of  giving  way 
to  some  explosion  of  passion,  or  else  of  falling  into  a  fit 
of  catalepsy.  His  companions,  however,  did  not  appear 
alarmed  by  his  vehemence,  although  they  seemed  to  treat 
him  with  remarkable  deference ;  and,  after  a  short  time,  his 
distorted  features  would  resume  their  symmetry  and  agree- 
able expression,  his  momentary  frenzy  would  subside,  and  a 
bright  smile  would  light  up  his  whole  countenance. 

The  Duke  inquired  the  name  of  this  workman,  and  was 
told  it  was  one  Pieter  Baas,  a  foreign  journeyman  of  remark- 
able mechanical  abilities  and  great  industry.  Approaching, 
he  entered  into  some  slight  conversation  with  him  upon 
matters  pertaining  to  his  craft.  While  they  were  convers- 
ing a  stranger  of  foreign  mien  and  costume  appeared,  hold- 
ing a  voluminous  letter  in  his  hand ;  the  workman  started 
up,  snatched  it  from  his  hand,  tore  off  the  seals  and  greedily 
devoured  its  contents,  while  the  stately  Marlborough  walked 
away  unnoticed.  The  Duke  was  well  aware  that,  in  this 
thin  disguise,  he  saw  the  Czar  of  Muscovy.  Pieter  Baas, 
or  Boss  Peter,  or  Master  Peter,  was  Peter  the  despot  of  all 
the  Russias,  a  man  who,  having  just  found  himself  the  un- 
disputed proprietor  of  a  quarter  of  the  globe  with  all  its  in- 
habitants, had  opened  his  eyes  to  the  responsibilities  of  his 
position,  and  had  voluntarily  descended  from  his  throne  for 
the  noble  purpose  of  qualifying  himself  to  reascend  it. 

The  empire  of  Russia,  at  this  moment  more  than  twice 
as  large  as  Europe,  having  a  considerable  extent  of  seacoasts, 
with  flourishing  commercial  havens  both  upon  the  Baltic 
and  the  Black  Seas,  and  a  chain  of  internal  communication, 


148  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

by  canal  and  river,  connecting  them  both  with  the  Caspian 
and  the  Volga,  was  at  the  accession  of  Peter  I.  of  quite  suf- 
ficient dimensions  for  any  reasonable  monarch's  ambition, 
but  of  most  unfortunate  geographical  position.  Shut  off 
from  civilized  western  Europe  by  vast  and  thinly  peopled 
forests  and  plains,  having  for  neighbors  only  "  the  sledded 
Polack,"  the  Turk,  the  Persian,  and  the  Chinese,  and  touch- 
ing nowhere  upon  the  ocean,  that  great  highway  of  civiliza- 
tion-— the  ancient  empire  of  the  Czars  seemed  always  in  a 
state  of  suffocation.  Remote  from  the  sea,  it  was  a  mam- 
moth without  lungs,  incapable  of  performing  the  functions 
belonging  to  its  vast  organization,  and  presenting  to  the 
world  the  appearance  of  a  huge,  incomplete,  and  inert  mass, 
waiting  the  advent  of  some  new  Prometheus  to  inspire  it 
with  life  and  light. 

Its  capital,  the  bizarre  and  fantastic  Moscow,  with  its 
vast,  turreted,  and  venerable  Kremlin — its  countless  church- 
es, with  their  flashing  spires  and  clustering  and  turbaned 
minarets  glittering  in  green,  purple,  and  gold ;  its  mosques, 
with  the  cross  supplanting  the  crescent ;  its  streets  swarming 
with  bearded  merchants  and  ferocious  Janizaries,  while  its 
female  population  were  immured  and  invisible — was  a  true 
type  of  the  empire,  rather  Asiatic  than  European,  and  yet 
compounded  of  both. 

The  government,  too,  was  far  more  Oriental  than  Euro- 
pean in  its  character.  The  Normans  had,  to  be  sure,  in 
the  eleventh  century  taken  possession  of  the  Russian  gov- 
ernment with  the  same  gentlemanlike  effrontery  with  which, 
at  about  the  same  time,  they  had  seated  themselves  upon 
every  throne  in  Europe ;  and  the  crown  of  Ruric  had  been 
transmitted  like  the  other  European  crowns  for  many  gen- 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  I49 

erations,  till  it  descended  through  a  female  branch  upon  the 
head  of  the  Romanoffs,  the  ancestors  of  Peter  and  the 
present  imperial  family.  But  though  there  might  be  said  to 
be  an  established  dynasty,  the  succession  to  the  throne  was 
controlled  by  the  Strelitzes,  the  licentious  and  ungovernable 
soldiery  of  the  capital,  as  much  as  the  Turkish  or  Roman 
Empire  by  the  Janizaries  or  pretorians ;  and  the  history  of 
the  government  was  but  a  series  of  palace-revolutions,  in 
which  the  sovereign,  the  tool  alternately  of  the  priesthood 
and  the  body-guard,  was  elevated,  deposed,  or  strangled, 
according  to  the  prevalence  of  different  factions  in  the 
capital.  The  government  was  in  fact,  as  it  has  been  epi- 
grammatically  characterized,  "  a  despotism  tempered  by  as- 
sassination." 

The  father  of  Peter  I.,  Alexis  Michaelovitch,  had  indeed 
projected  reforms  in  various  departments  of  the  govern- 
ment. He  seems  to  have  been,  to  a  certain  extent,  aware 
of  the  capacity  of  his  empire,  and  to  have  had  some  faint 
glimmerings  of  the  responsibility  which  weighed  upon  him, 
as  the  inheritor  of  this  vast  hereditary  estate.  He  under- 
took certain  revisions  of  the  laws,  if  the  mass  of  contra- 
dictory and  capricious  edicts  which  formed  the  code 
deserve  that  name;  and  his  attention  had  particularly 
directed  itself  to  the  condition  of  the  army  and  the 
church.  Upon  his  death,  in  1677,  he  left  two  sons,  The- 
odore and  John,  and  four  daughters,  by  his  first  wife; 
besides  one  son,  Peter,  born  in  1672,  and  one  daughter, 
Natalia,  by  the  second  wife,  of  the  house  of  Narischkin. 
The  eldest  son,  Theodore,  succeeded,  whose  administra- 
tion was  directed  by  his  sister,  the  ambitious  and  in- 
triguing Princess  Sophia,  assisted  by  her  paramour  Galitzin. 


iSo  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

Theodore  died  in  1682,  having  named  his  half-brother 
Peter  as  his  successor,  to  the  exclusion  of  his  own 
brother  John,  who  was  almost  an  idiot.  Sophia,  who,  in 
the  fitful  and  perilous  history  of  Peter's  boyhood,  seems 
like  the  wicked  fairy  in  so  many  Eastern  fables,  whose  mis- 
sion is  constantly  to  perplex,  and  if  possible  destroy,  the 
virtuous  young  prince,  who,  however,  struggles  manfully 
against  her  enchantments  and  her  hosts  of  allies,  and  comes 
out  triumphant  at  last- — Sophia,  assisted  by  Couvanski,  gen- 
eral of  the  Strelitzes,  excited  a  tumult  in  the  capital.  Art- 
fully inflaming  the  passions  of  the  soldiery,  she  directed 
their  violence  against  all  those  who  stood  between  her  and 
the  power  she  aimed  at ;  many  of  the  Narischkin  family 
(the  maternal  relatives  of  Peter),  with  their  adherents,  were 
butchered  with  wholesale  ferocity;  many  crown-officers 
were  put  to  death;  and  the  Princess  at  length  succeeded 
in  proclaiming  the  idiot  John  and  the  infant  Peter  as  joint 
Czars,  and  herself  as  regent. 

From  this  time  forth  Sophia,  having  the  reins  of  govern- 
ment securely  in  her  hand,  took  particular  care  to  surround 
the  youthful  Peter  with  the  worst  influences.  She  exposed 
him  systematically  to  temptation,  she  placed  about  him  the 
most  depraved  and  licentious  associates,  and  seems  to  have 
encouraged  the  germination  of  every  vicious  propensity 
with  the  most  fostering  care.  In  1689,  during  the  absence 
of  Prince  Galitzin  upon  his  second  unsuccessful  invasion  of 
the  Crimea,  Peter  was  married,  at  the  age  of  seventeen, 
through  the  influence  of  a  faction  hostile  to  Sophia,  to  a 
young  lady  of  the  Lapouchin  family.  After  the  return  of 
Galitzin  a  desperate  revolt  of  the  Strelitzes  was  concerted 
between  their  general  and  Sophia  and  Galitzin,  whose  ob- 


PETER   THE  GREAT.  151 

ject  was  to  seize  and  murder  Peter.  He  saved  himself  for 
the  second  time  in  the  Convent  of  the  Trinity — the  usual 
place  of  refuge  when  the  court  was  beleaguered,  as  was  not 
unusual,  by  the  Janizaries — assembled  around  him  those  of 
the  boiars  and  the  soldiers  who  were  attached  to  him,  and 
with  the  personal  bravery  and  promptness  which  have  de- 
scended like  an  heirloom  in  his  family,  defeated  the  con- 
spirators at  a  blow,  banished  Galitzin  to  Siberia,  and  locked 
up  Sophia  in  a  convent,  where  she  remained  till  her  death 
fifteen  years  afterward.  His  brother  John  remained  nomi- 
nally as  joint  Czar  till  his  death  in  1696. 

In  less  than  a  year  from  this  time  Peter  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  a  very  remarkable  man,  to  whom,  more  than 
to  any  other,  Russia  seems  to  have  been  indebted  for  the 
first  impulse  toward  civilization.  Happening  one  day  to  be 
dining  at  the  house  of  the  Danish  minister,  he  was  pleased 
with  the  manners  and  conversation  of  his  Excellency's  pri- 
vate secretary.  This  was  a  certain  youthful  Genevese  ad- 
venturer named  Lefort.  He  had  been  educated  for  the 
mercantile  profession  and  placed  in  a  counting-house ;  but 
being  of  an  adventurous  disposition,  with  decided  military 
tastes  and  talents,  he  had  enlisted  as  a  volunteer  and  served 
with  some  distinction  in  the  Low  Countries.  Still  following 
his  campaigning  inclinations,  he  enlisted  under  a  certain 
Colonel  Verstin,  who  had  been  commissioned  by  the  Czar 
Alexis  to  pick  up  some  German  recruits,  and  followed  him 
to  Archangel.  Arriving  there,  he  found  that  the  death  of 
Alexis  had  left  no  demand  for  the  services  either  of  himself 
or  the  Colonel,  and  after  escaping  with  difficulty  transporta- 
tion to  Siberia,  with  which  he  seems  to  have  been  threat- 
ened for  no  particular  reason,  he  followed  his  destiny  to 


152  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

Moscow,  where  he  found  employment  under  the  Danish 
envoy  De  Horn,  and  soon  after  was  introduced  to  the  Czar. 

It  was  this  young  adventurer,  a  man  of  no  extraordinary 
acquirements,  but  one  who  had  had  the  advantage  of  a 
European  education,  and  the  genius  to  know  its  value  and 
to  reap  its  full  benefit — a  man  of  wonderful  power  of  ob- 
servation, in  whom  intuition  took  the  place  of  experience, 
and  who  possessed  the  rare  faculty  of  impressing  himself 
upon  other  minds  with  that  genial  warmth  and  force  which 
render  the  impression  indelible — it  was  this  truant  Gene- 
vese  clerk  who  planted  the  first  seeds  in  the  fertile  but  then 
utterly  fallow  mind  of  the  Czar.  Geniality  and  sympathy 
were  striking  characteristics  of  both  minds,  and  they  seem 
to  have  united  by  a  kind  of  elective  affinity  from  the  first 
instant  they  were  placed  in  neighborhood  of  each  other. 

It  was  from  Lefort  that  the  Czar  first  learned  the  great 
superiority  of  the  disciplined  troops  of  western  Europe 
over  the  licentious  and  anarchical  soldiery  of  Russia.  It 
was  in  concert  with  Lefort  that  he  conceived  on  the  instant 
the  daring  plan  of  annihilating  the  Strelitzes,  the  body- 
guard which  had  set  up  and  deposed  the  monarchs — a  plan 
that  would  have  inevitably  cost  a  less  sagacious  and  vigor- 
ous prince  his  throne  and  life,  and  which  he  silently  and 
cautiously  matured,  till,  as  we  shall  have  occasion  to  relate, 
it  was  successfully  executed.  Almost  immediately  after  his 
acquaintance  with  Lefort,  he  formed  a  regiment  upon  the 
European  plan,  which  was  to  be  the  germ  of  the  reformed 
army  which  he  contemplated.  This  regiment  was  called 
the  Preobrazinski  body-guard,  from  the  name  of  the  palace, 
and  Lefort  was  appointed  its  colonel,  while  the  Czar  en- 
tered  himself  as  drummer. 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  153 

It  was  to  Lefort,  also,  that  the  Czar  was  about  this  time 
indebted  for  the  acquaintance  of  the  celebrated  Menshikoff. 
This  was  another  adventurer,  who  had  great  influence  upon 
the  fortunes  of  the  empire,  who  sprang  from  the  very  hum- 
blest origin,  and  who  seemed  like  Lefort  to  have  been 
guided  from  afar  by  the  finger  of  Providence  to  become  a 
fit  instrument  to  carry  out  the  plans  of  Peter.  The  son  of 
miserable  parents  upon  the  banks  of  the  Volga,  not  even 
taught  to  read  or  write,  Menshikoff  sought  his  fortune  in 
Moscow,  and  at  the  age  of  fourteen  became  apprentice  to 
a  pastry-cook,  and  earned  his  living  as  an  itinerant  vender 
of  cakes  and  pies ;  these  he  offered  about  the  streets,  rec- 
ommending them  in  ditties  of  his  own  composing,  which 
he  sang  in  a  very  sweet  voice.  While  engaged  in  this  hum- 
ble occupation  he  happened  one  day  to  attract  the  attention 
of  Lefort,  who  entered  into  some  little  conversation  with 
him.  The  Swiss  volunteer,  who  had  so  lately  expanded 
into  the  general  and  admiral  of  Muscovy,  could  hardly 
dream,  nor  did  he  live  long  enough  to  learn,  that  in  that 
fair-haired,  barefooted,  sweet-voiced  boy  the  future  prince 
of  the  empire,  general,  governor,  regent,  and  almost  auto- 
crat, stood  disguised  before  him.  There  really  seems  some- 
thing inexpressibly  romantic  in  the  accidental  and  strange 
manner  in  which  the  chief  actors  in  the  great  drama  of 
Peter's  career  seem  to  have  been  selected  and  to  have  re- 
ceived their  several  parts  from  the  great  hand  of  Fate.  The 
youthful  Menshikoff  was  presented  by  Lefort  to  the  Czar, 
who  was  pleased  with  his  appearance  and  vivacity  and 
made  him  his  page,  and  soon  afterward  his  favorite  and 
confidant.  At  about  the  same  time'  that  Peter  commenced 
his  model  regiment,  he  had  also  commenced  building  some 


I54  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

vessels  at  Voroneje,  with  which  he  had  already  formed  the 
design  of  sailing  down  the  Don  and  conquering  Azov,  the 
key  to  the  Black  Sea,  from  the  Turks. 

Nothing  indicated  the  true  instinct  of  Peter's  genius 
more  decidedly  than  the  constancy  with  which  he  cultivated 
a  love  for  maritime  affairs.  He  is  said  in  infancy  to  have 
had  an  almost  insane  fear  of  water  ;  but,  as  there  was  never 
any  special  reason  assigned  for  it,  this  was  probably  invented 
to  make  his  naval  progress  appear  more  remarkable.  At  all 
events,  he  seems  very  soon  to  have  conquered  his  hydropho- 
bia, and  in  his  boyhood  appears  to  have  found  his  chief 
amusement  in  paddling  about  the  river  Yausa,  which  passes 
through  Moscow,  in  a  little  skiff  built  by  a  Dutchman,  which 
had  attracted  his  attention  as  being  capable,  unlike  the  flat- 
bottomed  scows,  which  were  the  only  boats  with  which  he 
had  been  previously  familiar,  of  sailing  against  the  wind. 
Having  solved  the  mystery  of  the  keel,  he  became  passion- 
ately fond  of  the  sport,  and  not  satisfied  with  the  navigation 
of  the  Yausa,  nor  of  the  lake  Peipus,  upon  which  he  amused 
himself  for  a  time,  he  could  not  rest  till  he  had  proceeded 
to  Archangel,  where  he  purchased  and  manned  a  vessel,  in 
which  he  took  a  cruise  or  two  upon  the  Frozen  Ocean  as 
far  as  Ponoi,  upon  the  coast  of  Lapland. 

Peter  understood  thoroughly  the  position  of  his  empire, 
the  moment  he  came  to  the  throne.  Previous  Czars  had 
issued  a  multiplicity  of  edicts,  forbidding  their  subjects  to  go 
out  of  the  empire.  Peter  saw  that  the  great  trouble  was 
that  they  could  not  get  out.  Both  the  natural  gates  of  his 
realm  were  locked  upon  him,  and  the  keys  were  in  the  hands 
of  his  enemies.  When  we  look  at  the  map  of  Russia  now, 
we  do  not  sufficiently  appreciate  the  difficulties  of  Peter's 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  !55 

position  at  his  accession.  To  do  so  is  to  appreciate  his  ge- 
nius and  the  strength  of  his  will.  While  paddling  in  his 
little  skiff  on  the  Yausa,  he  had  already  determined  that  this 
great  inland  empire  of  his,  whose  inhabitants  had  never  seen 
or  heard  of  the  ocean,  should  become  a  maritime  power. 
He  saw  that,  without  seaports,  it  could  never  be  redeemed 
form  its  barbarism,  and  he  was  resolved  to  exchange  its 
mongrel  Orientalism  for  European  civilization.  Accord- 
ingly, before  he  had  been  within  five  hundred  miles  of  blue 
water,  he  made  himself  a  sailor,  and  at  the  same  time  formed 
the  plan,  which  he  pursued  with  iron  pertinacity  to  its  com- 
pletion, of  conquering  the  Baltic  from  the  Swede,  and  the 
Euxine  from  the  Turk.  Fully  to  see  and  appreciate  the 
necessity  of  this  measure  was,  in  the  young,  neglected  barba- 
rian prince,  a  great  indication  of  genius ;  but  the  resolution 
to  set  about  and  accomplish  this  mighty  scheme  in  the  face 
of  ten  thousand  obstacles  constituted  him  a  hero.  He  was, 
in  factr  one  of  those  few  characters  whose  existence  has  had 
a  considerable  influence  upon  history.  If  he  had  not  lived, 
Russia  would  very  probably  have  been  at  the  present  mo- 
ment one  great  Wallachia  or  Moldavia — a  vast  wilderness, 
peopled  by  the  same  uncouth  barbarians  who  even  now  con- 
stitute the  mass  of  its  population,  and  governed  by  a  strug- 
gling, brawling,  confused  mob  of  unlettered  boiars,  knavish 
priests,  and  cut-throat  Janizaries. 

It  was  not  so  trifling  a  task  as  it  may  now  appear,  for 
Russia  to  conquer  Sweden  and  the  Sublime  Porte.  On  the 
contrary,  Sweden  was  so  vastly  superior  in  the  scale  of  civili- 
zation, and  her  disciplined  troops,  trained  for  a  century 
upon  the  renowned  battle-fields  of  Europe,  with  a  young 
monarch  at  their  head  who  loved  war  as  other  youths  love  a 


156  PETER   THE  GREAT. 

mistress,  gave  her  such  a  decided  military  preponderance 
that  she  looked  upon  Russia  with  contempt.  The  Ottoman 
Empire,  too,  was  at  that  time  not  the  rickety,  decrepit  state 
which  it  now  is,  holding  itself  up,  like  the  cabman's  horse, 
only  by  being  kept  in  the  shafts,  and  ready  to  drop  the  first 
moment  its  foreign  master  stops  whipping ;  on  the  contrary, 
in  the  very  year  in  which  Peter  inherited  the  empire  from 
his  brother  Theodore,  two  hundred  thousand  Turks  besieged 
Vienna,  and  drove  the  Emperor  Leopold  in  dismay  from 
his  capital.  Although  the  downfall  of  the  Porte  may  be 
dated  from  the  result  of  that  memorable  campaign,  yet  the 
Sultan  was  then  a  vastly  more  powerful  potentate  than  the 
Czar,  and  the  project  to  snatch  from  him  the  citadel  of 
Azov,  the  key  of  the  Black  Sea,  was  one  of  unparalleled  au- 
dacity. 

But  Peter  had  already  matured  the  project,  and  was  de- 
termined to  execute  it.  He  required  seaports,  and,  having 
none,  he  determined  to  seize  those  of  his  neighbors.  Like 
the  "  King  of  Bohemia  with  his  seven  castles,"  he  was  the 
"  most  unfortunate  man  in  the  world,  because,  having  the 
greatest  passion  for  navigation  and  all  sorts  of  sea  affairs,  he 
had  never  a  seaport  in  all  his  dominions."  Without  stopping 
however,  like  Corporal  Trim,  to  argue  the  point  in  casuis- 
try, whether — Russia,  like  Bohemia,  being  an  inland  coun- 
try— it  would  be  consistent  with  Divine  benevolence  for  the 
ocean  to  inundate  his  neighbor's  territory  in  order  to  accom- 
modate him,  he  took  a  more  expeditious  method.  Preferring 
to  go  to  the  ocean,  rather  than  wait  for  the  ocean  to  come  to 
him,  in  1695  he  sailed  down  the  Don  with  his  vessels,  and 
struck  his  first  blow  at  Azov.  His  campaign  was  unsuccess- 
ful, through  the  treachery  and  desertion  of  an  artillery  offi- 


PETER   THE  GREAT. 


157 


cer  named  Jacob ;  but,  as  the  Czar  through  life  possessed 
the  happy  faculty  of  never  knowing  when  he  was  beaten,  he 
renewed  his  attack  the  next  year,  and  carried  the  place  with 
the  most  brilliant  success.  The  key  of  the  Palus  Mseotis 
was  thus  in  his  hands,  and  he  returned  in  triumph  to  Mos- 
cow, where  he  levied  large  sums  upon  the  nobility  and  cler- 
gy, to  build  and  sustain  a  fleet  upon  the  waters  he  had  con- 
quered, to  drive  the  Tartars  from  the  Crimea,  and  to  open 
and  sustain  a  communication  with  Persia,  through  Circassia 
and  Georgia. 

Thus  the  first  point  was  gained,  and  his  foot  at  last 
touched  the  ocean.  Moreover,  the  Tartars  of  the  Crimea, 
who  had  been  from  time  immemorial  the  pest  of  Russia — a 
horde  of  savages,  who  "  said  their  prayers  but  once  a  year, 
and  then  to  a  dead  horse,"  and  who  had  yet  compelled  the 
Muscovites  to  pay  them  an  annual  tribute,  and  had  inserted 
in  their  last  articles  of  peace  the  ignominious  conditions  that 
"  the  Czar  should  hold  the  stirrup  of  their  Khan,  and  feed 
his  horse  with  oats  out  of  his  cap,  if  they  should  chance  at 
any  time  to  meet " — these  savages  were  humbled  at  a  blow, 
and  scourged  into  insignificance  by  the  master  hand  of 
Peter. 

A  year  or  two  before  the  capture  of  Azov,  Peter  had  re- 
pudiated his  wife.  Various  pretexts,  such  as  infidelity  and 
jealousy,  have  been  assigned  for  the  step;  among  others, 
the  enmity  of  Menshikoff,  whom  she  had  incensed  by  the  ac- 
cusation that  he  had  taken  her  husband  to  visit  lewd  women 
who  had  formerly  been  his  customers  for  pies ;  but  the  real 
reason  was  that,  like  every  one  else  connected  with  the  great 
reformer,  she  opposed  herself  with  the  most  besotted  bigotry 
to  all  his  plans.  She  was  under  the  influence  of  the  priests, 


158  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

and  the  priests,  of  course,  opposed  him.  Unfortunately,  the 
Czar  left  his  son  Alexis  in  the  charge  of  the  mother,  a  mis- 
take which,  as  we  shall  see,  occasioned  infinite  disaster. 

Peter,  having  secured  himself  a  seaport,  sent  a  number 
of  young  Russians  to  study  the  arts  of  civilized  life  in  Hol- 
land, Italy,  and  Germany ;  but,  being  convinced  that  he 
must  do  everything  for  himself,  and  set  the  example  to  his 
subjects,  he  resolved  to  descend  from  his  throne  and  go  to 
Holland  to  perfect  himself  in  the  arts,  and  particularly  to 
acquire  a  thorough  practical  knowledge  of  maritime  affairs. 

Having  been  hitherto  unrepresented  in  any  European 
court,  he  fitted  out  a  splendid  embassy  extraordinary  to  the 
States-General  of  Holland — Lefort,  Golownin,  Voristzin, 
and  Menshikoff  being  the  plenipotentiaries,  while  the  Czar 
accompanied  them  incognito,  as  attache  to  the  mission.  The 
embassy  proceeds  through  Esthonia  and  Livonia,  visits.  Riga 
— where  the  Swedish  Governor,  D'Alberg,  refuses  permission 
to  visit  the  fortifications,  an  indignity  which  Peter  resolves 
to  punish  severely — and,  proceeding  through  Prussia,  is  re- 
ceived with  great  pomp  by  the  King  at  Konigsberg.  Here 
the  Germans  and  Russians,  "  most  potent  at  pottery,"  meet 
each  other  with  exuberant  demonstrations  of  friendship,  and 
there  is  much  carousing  and  hard  drinking.  At  this  place 
Peter  leaves  the  embassy,  travels  privately  and  with  great 
rapidity  to  Holland,  and  never  rests  till  he  has  established 
himself  as  a  journeyman  in  the  dockyard  of  Mynheer  Calf. 
From  a  seafaring  man  named  Kist,  whom  he  had  known  in 
Archangel,  he  hires  lodgings,  consisting  of  a  small  room  and 
kitchen,  and  a  garret  above  them,  and  immediately  com- 
mences a  laborious  and  practical  devotion  to  the  trade  which 
he  had  determined  to  acquire.  The  Czar  soon  became  a 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


I59 


most  accomplished  ship-builder.  His  first  essay  was  upon 
a  small  yacht,  which  he  purchased  and  refitted  upon 
his  arrival,  and  in  which  he  spent  all  his  leisure  moments, 
sailing  about  in  the  harbor,  visiting  the  vessels  in  port,  and 
astonishing  the  phlegmatic  Dutchmen  by  the  agility  with 
which  he  flew  about  among  the  shipping.  Before  his  de- 
parture he  laid  down  and  built,  from  his  own  draught  and 
model,  a  sixty-gun  ship,  at  much  of  the  carpentry  of  which 
he  worked  with  his  own  hands,  and  which  was  declared  by 
many  competent  judges  to  be  an  admirable  specimen  of  na- 
val architecture. 

But,  besides  his  proficiency  so  rapidly  acquired  in  all 
maritime  matters,  he  made  considerable  progress  in  civil 
engineering,  mathematics,  and  the  science  of  fortification, 
besides  completely  mastering  the  Dutch  language,  and  ac- 
quiring the  miscellaneous  accomplishments  of  tooth-drawing, 
bloodletting,  and  tapping  for  the  dropsy.  He  was  indefati- 
gable in  visiting  every  public  institution,  charitable,  literary, 
or  scientific,  in  examining  the  manufacturing  establishments, 
the  corn-mills,  saw-mills,  paper-mills,  oil-factories,  all  of 
which  he  studied  practically,  with  the  view  of  immediately 
introducing  these  branches  of  industry  into  his  own  domin- 
ions ;  and,  before  leaving  Holland,  he  spent  some  time  at 
Texel,  solely  for  the  purpose  of  examining  the  whale-ships, 
and  qualifying  himself  to  instruct  his  subjects  in  this  pursuit 
after  his  return.  "  Wat  is  dat?  Dat  wil  ik  zien"  was  his 
eternal  exclamation  to  the  quiet  Hollanders,  who  looked 
with  profound  astonishment  at  this  boisterous  foreign  prince, 
in  carpenter's  disguise,  flying  round  like  a  harlequin,  swing- 
ing his  stick  over  the  backs  of  those  who  stood  in  his  way, 
making  strange  grimaces,  and  rushing  from  one  object  to 


160  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

another  with  a  restless  activity  of  body  and  mind  which 
seemed  incomprehensible.  He  devoured  every  possible 
morsel  of  knowledge  with  unexampled  voracity ;  but  the  se- 
quel proved  that  his  mind  had  an  ostrich-like  digestion  as 
well  as  appetite.  The  seeds  which  he  collected  in  Holland, 
Germany,  and  England  bore  a  rich  harvest  in  the  Scythian 
wildernesses,  where  his  hand  planted  them  on  his  return. 
Having  spent  about  nine  months  in  the  Netherlands,  he  left 
that  country  for  England. 

His  purpose  in  visiting  England  was  principally  to  ex- 
amine her  navy-yards,  dockyards,  and  maritime  establish- 
ments, and  to  acquire  some  practical  knowledge  of  English 
naval  architecture.  He  did  not  design  to  work  in  the  dock- 
yards, but  he  preserved  his  incognito^  although  received  with 
great  attention  by  King  William,  who  furthered  all  his  plans 
to  the  utmost,  and  deputed  the  Marquis  of  Caermarthen, 
with  whom  the  Czar  became  very  intimate,  to  minister  to 
all  his  wants  during  his  residence  in  England.  He  was  first 
lodged  in  York  Buildings ;  but  afterward,  in  order  to  be 
near  the  sea,  he  took  possession  of  a  house  called  Sayes 
Court,  belonging  to  the  celebrated  John  Evelyn,  "  with  a 
back  door  into  the  king's  yard,  at  Deptford  " ;  there,  says 
an  old  writer,  "  he  would  often  take  up  the  carpenters'  tools, 
and  work  with  them ;  and  he  frequently  conversed  with  the 
builders,  who  showed  him  their  draughts,  and  the  method 
of  laying  down,  by  proportion,  any  ship  or  vessel." 

It  is  amusing  to  observe  the  contempt  with  which  the 
servant  of  the  gentle,  pastoral  Evelyn  writes  to  his  master 
concerning  his  imperial  tenant,  and  the  depredations  and 
desecrations  committed  upon  his  "  most  boscaresque 
grounds."  "  There  is  a  house  full  of  people,"  he  says, 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  ^ 

"  right  nasty.  The  Czar  lies  next  your  library,  and  dines 
in  the  parlor  next  your  study.  He  dines  at  ten  o'clock, 
and  six  at  night ;  is  very  seldom  at  home  a  whole  day ;  very 
often  in  the  king's  yard,  or  by  water,  dressed  in  several 
dresses.  The  best  parlor  is  pretty  clean  for  the  King  to 
be  entertained  in."  Moreover,  in  the  garden  at  Sayes 
Court,  there  was,  to  use  Evelyn's  own  language,  "  a  glorious 
and  refreshing  object,  an  impregnable  hedge  of  about  four 
hundred  feet  in  length,  nine  feet  high,  and  five  feet  in  diam- 
eter, at  any  time  of  the  year  glittering  with  its  armed  and 
variegated  leaves ;  the  taller  standards,  at  orderly  distances, 
blushing  with  their  natural  coral  " ;  and  through  this  "  glo- 
rious and  refreshing  object "  the  Czar  amused  himself  by 
trundling  a  wheelbarrow  every  morning  for  the  sake  of  the 
exercise ! 

He  visited  the  hospitals,  and  examined  most  of  the  pub- 
lic institutions  in  England  ;  and  particularly  directed  his 
attention  toward  acquiring  information  in  engineering,  and 
collecting  a  body  of  skillful  engineers  and  artificers  to  carry 
on  the  great  project  which  he  had  already  matured  of  open- 
ing an  artificial  communication  by  locks  and  canals  between 
the  Volga,  the  Don,  and  the  Caspian — a  design,  by  the  way, 
which  was  denounced  by  the  clergy  and  nobility  of  his  em- 
pire "  as  a  piece  of  impiety,  being  to  turn  the  streams  one 
way  which  Providence  had  directed  another."  His  even- 
ings were  generally  spent  with  the  Marquis  of  Caermarthen, 
with  pipes,  beer,  and  brandy,  at  a  tavern  near  Tower  Hill, 
which  is  still  called  the  "Czar  of  Muscovy." 

During  his  stay  in  England  he  went  to  see  the  Univer- 
sity of  Oxford,  and  visited  many  of  the  cathedrals  and 
churches,  and  "  had  also  the  curiosity  to  view  the  Quakers 
ii 


i62  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

and  other  Dissenters  at  their  meeting-houses  in  the  time  of 
service."  In  this  connection  it  is  impossible  not  to  quote 
the  egregiously  foolish  remarks  of  Bishop  Burnet  in  his 
"  History  of  his  own  Times  "  : 

"  I  waited  upon  him  often,"  says  the  Bishop,  "  and  was  ordered, 
both  by  the  King  and  the  Archbishop,  to  attend  upon  him  and  to 
offer  him  such  information  as  to  our  religion  and  constitution  as  he 
might  be  willing  to  receive.  I  had  good  interpreters,  so  I  had  much 
free  discourse  with  him.  He  is  a  man  of  a  very  hot  temper,  soon 
influenced,  and  very  brutal  in  his  passion  ,  he  raises  his  natural  heat 
by  drinking  much  brandy,  which  he  rectifies  himself  with  great 
application ;  he  is  subject  to  convulsive  motions  all  over  his  body, 
and  his  head  seems  to  be  affected  with  these.  He  wants  not  capaci- 
ty, and  has  a  larger  measure  of  knowledge  than  might  be  expected 
from  his  education,  which  was  very  indifferent;  a  want  of  judg- 
ment, with  an  instability  of  temper,  appears  in  him  but  too  often 
and  too  evidently.  He  is  mechanically  turned,  and  seems  designed 
by  nature  rather  to  be  a  ship-carpenter  than  a  great  prince.  This 
was  his  chief  study  and  exercise  while  he  staid  here ;  he  wrought 
much  with  his  own  hands,  and  made  all  about  him  work  at  the 
models  of  ships.  He  told  me  he  designed  a  great  fleet  at  Azov, 
and  with  it  to  attack  the  Turkish  Empire ;  but  he  did  not  seem 
capable  of  conducting  so  great  a  design,  though  his  conduct  in  his 
wars  since  this  has  discovered  a  greater  genius  in  him  than  appeared 
at  that  time.  He  was  desirous  to  understand  our  doctrine,  but  he 
did  not  seem  disposed  to  mend  matters  in  Muscovy.  He  was,  in- 
deed, resolved  to  encourage  learning  and  to  polish  his  people  by 
sending  some  of  them  to  travel  in  other  countries,  and  to  draw 
strangers  to  come  and  live  among  them.  He  seemed  apprehensive 
still  of  his  sister's  intrigues.  There  is  a  mixture  both  of  passion 
and  severity  in  his  temper.  He  is  resolute,  but  understands  little 
of  war,  and  seemed  not  at  all  inquisitive  in  that  way.  After  I  had 
seen  him  often,  and  had  conversed  much  with  him,  I  could  not  but 


PETER    THE  GREAT,  T63 

adore  the  depth  of  the  providence  of  God,  that  had  raised  up  such 
a  furious  man  to  so  absolute  an  authority  over  so  great  a  part  of  the 
world." — ("  History  of  his  own  Times,"  vol.  ii.,  pp.  221,  222.) 

The  complacency  with  which  the  prelate  speaks  of  this 
"  furious  man,"  designed  by  nature  rather  to  be  a  ship-car- 
penter than  a  great  prince,"  who  "did  not  seem  disposed 
to  mend  matters  in  Muscovy,"  is  excessively  ludicrous. 
Here  was  a  youth  of  twenty-five,  who  had  seen  with  a 
glance  the  absolute  necessity  of  opening  for  his  empire  a 
pathway  to  the  ocean,  and  had  secured  that  pathway  by  a 
blow,  and  who  now,  revolving  in  his  mind  the  most  daring 
schemes  of  conquest  over  martial  neighbors,  and  vast  pro- 
jects of  internal  improvement  for  his  domains,  had  gone 
forth  in  mask  and  domino  from  his  barbarous  citadel,  not 
for  a  holiday  pastime,  but  to  acquire  the  arts  of  war  and 
peace,  and,  like  a  modern  Cadmus,  to  transplant  from  older 
regions  the  seeds  of  civilization  to  the  barbarous  wilderness- 
es of  his  realm.  Here  was  a  crowned  monarch,  born  in  the 
purple,  and  in  the  very  heyday  of  his  youth,  exchanging 
his  diadem  and  scepter  for  the  tools  of  a  shipwright,  while 
at  the  same  time  in  his  capacious  brain  his  vast  future  lay 
as  clearly  imaged,  and  his  great  projects  already  to  his 
imagination  appeared  as  palpable  as,  long  years  afterward, 
when  completed,  they  became  to  the  observation  of  the 
world  ;  and  yet,  upon  the  whole,  the  churchman  thought 
him  "  not  disposed  to  mend  matters  in  Muscovy,"  and  rather 
fitted  by  nature  "  to  be  a  ship-carpenter  than  a  great 
prince." 

The  Czar,  before  his  departure  from  England,  engaged 
a  large  number  of  scientific  persons,  at  the  head  of  whom 
was  Ferguson,  the  engineer,  to  accompany  him  to  Russia, 


164  PETER   THE  GREAT. 

to  be  employed  upon  the  various  works  of  internal  improve- 
ment already  projected.  To  all  these  persons  he  promised 
liberal  salaries,  which  were  never  paid,  and  perfect  liberty 
to  depart  when  they  chose,  "with  crowns  for  convoy  put 
into  their  purse  " ;  although,  in  the  sequel,  the  poor  devils 
never  got  a  ruble  for  their  pains,  and  those  who  escaped 
assassination  by  some  jealous  Russian  or  other,  and  were 
able  to  find  their  way  "  bootless  home,  and  weather-beaten 
back,"  after  a  few  profitless  years  spent  upon  the  Czar's 
sluices  and  bridges, -were  to  be  considered  fortunate. 

One  of  the  disadvantages,  we  suppose,  of  one  man's 
owning  a  whole  quarter  of  the  globe  and  all  its  inhabitants, 
is  a  tendency  to  think  lightly  of  human  obligations.  It  is 
useless  to  occupy  one's  mind  with  engagements  that  no 
human  power  can  enforce.  The  artificers,  being  there, 
might  accomplish  their  part  of  the  Czar's  mission  to  civilize, 
or  at  least  to  Europeanize,  Russia.  This  was  matter  of 
consequence  to  the  world;  their  salaries  were  of  no  impor- 
tance to  anybody  but  themselves.  It  is  odd  that  these 
persons  were  the  first  to  introduce  into  Russia  the  science 
of  reckoning  by  Arabic  numerals,  accounts  having  been 
formerly  kept  (and,  indeed,  being  still  kept  by  all  shop- 
keepers and  retail  dealers)  by  means  of  balls  upon  a  string, 
as  billiards  are  marked  in  America.  For  the  Czar  to  have 
introduced  an  improved  method  of  account-keeping  by 
means  of  the  very  men  with  whom  he  intended  to  keep  no 
account  at  all  seems  a  superfluous  piece  of  irony,  but  so  it 
was.  He  had,  however,  a  nicer  notion  of  what  was  due 
from  one  potentate  to  another ;  for,  upon  taking  his  depart- 
ure from  England,  he  took  from  his  breeches-pocket  a  ruby, 
wrapped  in  brown  paper,  worth  about  ten  thousand  pounds, 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  ^5 

and  presented  it  to  King  William.  He  also,  in  return  for 
the  agreeable  hours  passed  with  Lord  Caermarthen  at  the 
"  Czar  of  Muscovy  "  upon  Tower  Hill,  presented  that  noble- 
man with  the  right  to  license  every  hogshead  of  tobacco 
exported  to  Russia  by  an  English  company  who  had  paid 
him  fifteen  thousand  pounds  for  the  monopoly,  and  to 
charge  five  shillings  for  each  license. 

Upon  his  return  through  Vienna,  where  he  was  enter- 
tained with  great  pomp,  he  received  news  of  an  insurrec- 
tion which  had  broken  out  in  Moscow,  but  which  had 
already  been  suppressed  by  the  energy  of  General  Patrick 
Gordon.  This  news  induced  him  to  give  up  his  intended 
visit  to  Italy  and  to  hasten  back  to  his  capital.  He  found 
upon  his  arrival  that  the  Strelitzes,  who,  instigated  of 
course  by  the  Princess  Sophia,  were  the  authors  of  the 
revolt,  had  been  defeated  and  the  ringleaders  imprisoned. 
He  immediately  hung  up  three  or  four  of  them  in  front 
of  Sophia's  window,  had  half  a  dozen  more  hung  and  quar- 
tered, and  a  few  more  broken  upon  the  wheel.  Under  the 
circumstances,  this  was  quite  as  little  as  a  Czar  who  re- 
spected himself,  and  who  proposed  to  remain  Czar,  could 
have  done  by  way  of  retaliation  upon  a  body  of  men  as 
dangerous  as  these  Strelitzes. 

It  is  not  singular,  however,  that  at  that  day,  when  the 
Czar  of  Muscovy  was  looked  upon  by  western  Europeans 
as  an  ogre  who  habitually  breakfasted  upon  his  subjects, 
these  examples  of  wholesome  severity  were  magnified  into 
the  most  improbable  fables.  Korb,  the  secretary  of  the 
Austrian  legation  at  Moscow,  entertained  his  sovereign 
with  minute  details  of  several  banquets  given  by  Peter  to 
the  nobility  and  diplomatic  corps,  at  every  one  of  which 


166  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

several  dozen  Strelitzes  were  decapitated  in  the  dining- 
room.  He  tells  of  one  select  dinner-party  in  particular,  in 
which  the  Czar  chopped  off  the  heads  of  twenty  with  his 
own  hands,  washing  down  each  head  with  a  bumper  of 
brandy,  and  then  obliging  Lefort,  and  several  of  the 
judges,  and  some  of  the  foreign  ministers,  to  try  their 
hand  at  the  sport.  In  short,  if  we  could  believe  contem- 
porary memorialists,  the  Strelitzes  were  kept  in  preserves 
like  pheasants,  and  a  grand  battue  was  given  once  a  week  by 
the  Czar  to  his  particular  friends,  in  which  he  who  bagged 
the  most  game  was  sure  to  recommend  himself  most  to  the 
autocrat.  If  we  were  to  rely  upon  the  general  tone  of 
contemporary  history,  or  to  place  any  credence  in  circum- 
stantial and  statistical  details  of  persons  having  facts  within 
their  reach,  we  should  believe  that  there  never  was  so  much 
fun  in  Moscow  as  while  these  Strelitzes  lasted.  Residents 
there  stated  that  two  thousand  of  them  were  executed  in 
all,  including  those  made  away  with  by  the  Czar  and  the 
dilettanti. 

Perhaps  our  readers  may  think  that  we  are  exaggerating. 
We  can  assure  them  that  the  flippancy  is  not  ours,  but  his- 
tory's. We  should  have  dwelt  less  upon  the  topic  had  not 
our  friend  the  Marquis  de  Custine  reproduced  some  of 
these  fables  with  such  imperturbable  gravity.* 


*  On  lit  dans  M.  de  Segur  les  faits  suivants :  "  Pierre,  lui-meme  a 
interroge  ces  criminels  (les  Strelitz)  par  la  torture ;  puis  a  1'imitation' 
d'lwan  le  Tyran,  il  se  fait  leur  juge,  leur  bourreau ;  il  force  ses  nobles, 
restes  fideles,  a  trancher  les  tetes  des  nobles  coupables,  qu'ils  viennent 
de  condamner.  Le  cruel,  du  haut  de  son  trone  assiste  d'un  ceil  sec  a  ces 
executions ;  il  fait  plus,  il  mele  aux  joies  des  festins  I'horreur  des  sup- 
plices.  Ivre  de  vin  et  de  sang,  le  verre  d'une  main,  la  hache  de  1'autre, 
en  une  seule  heure,  vingt  libations  successives  marquent  la  chute  de 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  !67 

At  all  events,  the  Strelitzes  were  entirely  crushed  by 
these  vigorous  measures ;  and  from  cutting  off  the  heads  of 
the  Janizaries,  the  Czar  now  found  leisure  to  cut  off  the 
petticoats  and  beards  of  his  subjects.  The  great  cause  of 
complaint  which  De  Custine  makes  against  Peter  is  that  he 
sought  to  improve  his  country  by  importing  the  seeds  of 
civilization  from  the  older  countries  of  western  Europe. 
He  would  have  preferred  to  have  had  the  Russians,  being 
a  Slavonic  race,  civilized  as  it  were  Slavonically.  What 
this  process  is,  and  where  it  has  been  successfully  put  into 
operation,  he  does  not  inform  us.  As  we  read  the  history 
of  the  world,  it  seems  to  us  that  the  arts  have  circled  the 
earth,  successively  implanting  themselves  in  different  coun- 
tries at  different  epochs,  and  producing  different  varieties 
of  intellectual,  moral,  and  physical  fruit,  corresponding  to 
the  myriad  influences  exercised  upon  the  seed.  At  all 
events,  if  Peter  made  a  mistake  in  importing  the  germs  of 
ancient  culture  from  more  favored  lands,  it  was  a  mistake 
he  made  in  common  with  Cadmus,  and  Cecrops,  and  The- 


vingt  tetes  de  Stre"litz,  qu'il  abat  a  ses  pieds,  en  s'enorgueillissant  de  son 
horrible  adresse.  L'anne'e  d'apres,  le  centre  coup,  soit  du  soulevement 
de  ses  Janissaires,  soit  de  1'atrocite  de  leur  supplice,  retentit  au  loin  dans 
1'empire,  et  d'autres  revokes  eclatent.  Quatre-vingt  Strelitz,  charges  de 
chaines,  sont  traines  d'Azoff  a  Moscou,  et  leurs  tetes,  qu'un  boyard  tient 
successivement  par  les  cheveux,  tombent  encore  sous  la  hache  du  Czar." 
— ("  Histoire  de  Russie  et  de  Pierre  le  Grand,"  par  M.  le  General  Comte 
de  Segur. — "  La  Russie  en  1839,"  par  le  Marquis  de  Custine,  i.,  306.) 

"  Mais  tandis  que  ce  grand  precepteur  de  son  peuple  enseignait  si 
bien  la  civilite  pue'rile  aux  boyards  et  aux  marchands  de  Moscou,  il 
s'abaissait  lui  meme  a  la  pratique  des  metiers  les  plus  vils,  a  commencer 
par  celui  de  bourreau ;  on  lui  a  vu  couper  vingt  tetes  de  sa  main  dans 
une  soiree  ;  et  on  1'a  entendu  se  vanter  de  son  adresse  a  ce  metier,  qu'il 
exer£a  avec  une  rare  fe'rocite'  lorsqu'il  cut  triomphe'  des  coupables,  mais 
encore  plus  malheureux  Str&itz,"  etc. — (De  Custine,  iii.,  330.) 


1 68  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

seus,  and  other  semi-fabulous  personages — with  Solon,  and 
Lycurgus,  and  Pythagoras,  in  less  crepuscular  times. 

Right  or  wrong,  however,  Peter  was  determined  to  Occi- 
dentalize  his  empire.  The  darling  wish  of  his  heart  was  to 
place  himself  upon  the  seashore,  in  order  the  more  easily  to 
Europeanize  his  country.  In  the  mean  time,  and  while 
awaiting  a  good  opportunity  for  the  "  reannexation  "  of 
Ingria,  Esthonia,  and  Livonia,  provinces  which  had  several 
centuries  before  belonged  to  the  Russian  crown,  but  had 
been  ceded  to  and  possessed  by  Sweden  for  ages,  he  began 
to  denationalize  his  subjects  by  putting  a  tax  upon  their 
beards  and  their  petticoats.  Strange  to  say,  his  subjects 
were  so  much  more  patriotic  than  their  master,  that  the  tax 
became  very  productive.  Peter  increased  his  revenue,  but 
could  not  diminish  the  beards  or  petticoats.  He  was 
obliged  to  resort  to  force,  and  by  "  entertaining  a  score  or 
two  of  tailors  and  barbers  "  at  each  gate  of  Moscow,  whose 
business  it  was  to  fasten  upon  every  man  who  entered,  and 
to  "cut  his  petticoats  all  round  about,"  as  well  as  his  whis- 
kers, he  at  last  succeeded  in  humanizing  their  costume — a 
process  highly  offensive,  and  which  caused  the  clergy,  who 
naturally  favored  the  Russian  nationality  upon  which  they 
were  fattened,  to  denounce  him  as  Antichrist.  At  the  same 
time  he  altered  the  commencement  of  the  year  from  the  ist 
of  September  to  the  ist  of  January,  much  to  the  astonish- 
ment of  his  subjects,  who  wondered  that  the  Czar  could 
change  the  course  of  the  sun.  He  also  instituted  assem- 
blies for  the  encouragement  of  social  intercourse  between 
the  sexes.  But  his  most  important  undertakings  were  the 
building,  under  his  immediate  superintendence,  assisted  by 
the  English  officers  whom  he  had  brought  with  him,  of  a 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  169 

large  fleet  upon  the  Don,  and  the  junction  of  that  river  with 
the  Volga.  About  this  time  he  met  with  an  irreparable  loss 
in  the  death  of  Lefort,  who  perished  at  the  early  age  of 
forty-six.  Peter  was  profoundly  afflicted  by  this  event,  and 
honored  his  remains  with  magnificent  obsequies. 

Both  coasts  of  the  Gulf  of  Finland,  together  with  both 
banks  of  the  river  Neva,  up  to  the  lake  Ladoga,  had  been 
long  and  were  still  in  possession  of  the  Swedes.  These 
frozen  morasses  were  not  a  tempting  site  for  a  metropolis, 
certainly;  particularly  when  they  happened  to  be  in  the 
possession  of  the  most  warlike  nation  of  Europe,  governed 
by  the  most  warlike  monarch,  as  the  sequel  proved,  that  had 
ever  sat  upon  its  throne.  Still,  Peter  had  determined  to 
take  possession  of  that  coast,  and  already  in  imagination 
had  built  his  capital  upon  those  dreary  solitudes,  peopled 
only  by  the  elk,  the  wolf,  and  the  bear.  This  man,  more 
than  any  one  perhaps  that  ever  lived,  was  an  illustration  of 
the  power  of  volition.  He  always  settled  in  his  own  mind 
exactly  what  he  wanted,  and  then  put  on  his  wishing-cap. 
With  him  to  will  was  to  have.  Obstacles  he  took  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course.  It  never  seemed  to  occur  to  him  to  doubt 
the  accomplishment  of  his  purpose.  For  our  own  part  we 
do  not  admire  the  capital  which  he  built,  nor  the  place  he 
selected ;  both  are  mistakes,  in  our  humble  opinion,  as  time 
will  prove  and  is  proving.  But  it  is  impossible  not  to  ad- 
mire such  a  masterly  effort  of  human  volition  as  the  erection 
of  Petersburg. 

In  the  year  1700  was  formed  the  alliance  between  Augus- 
tus the  Strong,  Elector  of  Saxony  and  King  of  Poland,  the 
King  of  Denmark,  and  the  Czar  Peter,  against  Charles  XII., 
King  of  Sweden,  then  a  boy  of  eighteen,  of  whose  character 


i7o  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

nothing  was  known,  and  who,  it  was  thought  probable, 
might  be  bullied.  The  Czar,  as  we  know,  desired  Ingria 
and  Carelia.  Augustus  wished  to  regain  Esthonia  and  Li- 
vonia, ceded  by  Poland  to  Charles  XI.  of  Sweden;  and 
Denmark  wished  to  recover  Holstein  and  Schleswig.  It 
soon  appeared  that  the  allied  sovereigns  had  got  hold  of  the 
wrong  man.  Charles  XII.,  to  the  astonishment  of  his  own 
court  no  less  than  of  his  enemies,  in  one  instant  blazed  forth 
a  hero.  He  "smote  the  sledded  Polack,"  to  begin  with; 
then  defeated  the  Danes ;  and,  having  thus  dispatched  his 
two  most  formidable  enemies  in  appearance,  he  was  at 
leisure  to  devote  his  whole  attention  to  the  Czar,  whom, 
however,  he  treated  with  the  contempt  which  a  thorough- 
bred soldier,  at  the  head  of  tried  and  disciplined  troops, 
naturally  felt  for  the  barbarous  autocrat  of  barbarous 
hordes. 

Peter,  however,  who  knew  nothing  of  war  but  in  theory, 
with  the  exception  of  his  maiden  campaign  of  Azov,  went 
manfully  forward  to  the  encounter.  He  invaded  Ingria  at 
the  head  of  sixty  thousand  men ;  and  wishing,  like  Andrew 
Aguecheek,  to  "  keep  on  the  windy  side  of  the  law,"  and  to 
save  appearances,  he  defended  his  invasion  by  the  ludicrous 
pretext  that  his  ambassadors  had  been  charged  exorbitant 
prices  for  provisions  on  their  tour  through  the  Swedish 
provinces  to  Holland,  and  that  he  himself  had  been  denied 
a  sight  of  the  citadel  at  Riga.  Not  that  he  wanted  Riga 
himself,  or  Ingria,  or  Livonia — u  Oh,  no,  not  at  all  " — but  the 
preposterous  charges  made  by  the  butchers  and  bakers  of 
Ingria  were  insults  which  could  only  be  washed  out  in 
blood.  On  the  '2oth  of  September  he  laid  siege  to  Narva,  a 
strongly  fortified  town  on  the  river  Narowa.  On  the 


PETER    THE  GREAT,  I?I 

of  November,  Charles  XII.  fell  upon  Peter's  army  during  a 
tremendous  snow-storm,  which  blew  directly  in  their  teeth, 
and  with  nine  thousand  soldiers  completely  routed  and 
cut  to  pieces  or  captured  about  sixty  thousand  Russians. 
Never  was  a  more  ignominious  defeat.  The  Russians  were 
slaughtered  like  sheep,  and  their  long  petticoats  prevented 
the  survivors  from  running  away  half  as  fast  as  they  wished. 
The  consequence  was  that,  according  to  the  Swedish  ac- 
counts, the  prisoners  four  times  outnumbered  the  whole 
Swedish  army. 

One  would  have  thought  that  this  would  have  settled 
the  Czar  for  a  little  while,  and  kept  him  quiet  and  reason- 
able. It  did  so.  He  preserved  the  most  imperturbable 
sang  fr old  after  his  return  to  Moscow,  and  devoted  himself 
with  more  zeal  than  ever  to  the  junction  of  the  Baltic  and 
the  Euxine,  just  at  the  moment  when  the  former  seemed 
farthest  from  him,  and  when  a  common  man  would  have 
been  "  qualmish  at  the  name  "  of  Baltic.  At  the  same  time, 
reversing  the  commonplace  doctrine,  he  continues  in  war  to 
prepare  for  peace — with  one  hand  importing  sheep  from 
Saxony,  erecting  linen  and  paper  factories,  building  hospi- 
tals and  founding  schools,  while  with  the  other  he  melts  all 
the  church  and  convent  bells  in  Moscow  into  cannon,  and 
makes  every  preparation  for  a  vigorous  campaign  the  ensu- 
ing season.  He  had  not  the  slightest  suspicion  that  he  was 
beaten.  He  was,  in  fact,  one  of  those  intellectual  Titans 
who  never  feel  their  strength  till  they  have  been  fairly  struck 
to  the  earth.  "  I  know  very  well,"  he  says  in  his  journal, 
"  that  the  Swedes  will  have  the  advantage  of  us  for  a  con- 
siderable time ;  but  they  will  teach  us  at  length  to  beat 
them."  And  at  a  later  period  he  says :  "  If  we  had  ob- 


172 


PETER   THE  GREAT. 


tained  a  victory  over  the  Swedes  at  Narva,  being,  as  we 
were,  so  little  instructed  in  the  arts  of  war  and  policy,  into 
what  an  abyss  might  not  this  good  fortune  have  sunk  us ! 
On  the  contrary,  the  success  of  the  Swedes  cost  them  very 
dear  afterward  at  Pultowa." 

In  the  following  spring  "his  troops  obtained  some  trifling 
successes,  and  General  Scherematoff  made  the  memorable 
capture  of  Marienburg,  in  Livonia,  memorable  not  so  much 
in  a  military  point  of  view  as  on  account  of  a  young  and 
pretty  Livonian  girl  who  was  captured  with  the  town.  This 
young  woman,  whose  Christian  name  was  Martha,  without 
any  patronymic,  or  any  at  least  that  has  been  preserved, 
was  born  near  Dorpt,  and  had  been  educated  by  one  Dr. 
Gluck,  a  Lutheran  minister  at  Marienburg,  who  pronounced 
her  a  "  pattern  of  virtue,  intelligence,  and  good  conduct " ; 
she  had  been  married  the  day  before  the  battle  of  Marien- 
burg to  a  Swedish  sergeant,  who  fell  in  the  action,  and  she 
now  found  herself  alone,  a  friendless,  helpless  widow  and 
orphan  of  sixteen,  exposed  without  'any  protector  to  all  the 
horrors  of  a  besieged  and  captured  town. 

If  a  writer  of  fiction,  with  a  brain  fertile  in  extravagant 
and  incredible  romance,  had  chosen  to  describe  to  us  this 
young  peasant  -  girl,  weeping  half  distracted  among  the 
smoking  ruins  of  an  obscure  provincial  town,  and  then, 
after  rapidly  shifting  a  few  brilliant  and  tumultuous  scenes 
in  his  phantasmagoria,  had  presented  to  us  the  same  orphan 
girl  as  a  crowned  empress,  throned  upon  a  quarter  of  the 
world,  and  the  sole  arbitress  and  autocrat  of  thirty  millions 
of  human  beings,  and  all  this  without  any  discovery  of  a 
concealed  origin,  without  crime  and  without  witchcraft, 
with  ^nothing  supernatural  in  the  machinery,  and  nothing 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  I73 

intricate  in  the  plot — should  we  not  all  have  smiled  at  his 
absurdity  ?  And  yet,  this  captive  girl  became  the  consort 
of  the  Czar  Peter,  and  upon  his  death  the  Empress  of  all  the 
Russias.  The  Russian  General  Bauer  saw  her,  and  rescued 
her  from  the  dangers  of  the  siege.  She  afterward  became 
the  mistress  of  Menshikoff,  with  whom  she  lived  till  1704, 
when,  in  the  seventeenth  year  of  her  age,  the  Czar  saw  her, 
was  captivated  by  her  beauty,  and  took  her  for  his  mistress, 
and  afterward  privately,  and  then  publicly,  married  her. 

It  is  to  this  epoch  that  belongs  the  abolition  of  the  patri- 
archal dignity  in  Russia.  Peter,  having  at  a  blow  destroyed 
the.  Strelitzes,  had  long  intended  to  annihilate  the  ecclesias- 
tical power,  the  only  balance  which  existed  in  the  country 
to  the  autocracy  of  the  sovereign.  The  superstition  of  the 
Russians  was  and  is  unbounded.  Their  principal  saint  was 
Saint  Anthony,  who,  says  a  quaint  old  author,  "came  all 
the  way  from  Rome  to  Novgorod  by  water  on  a  millstone, 
sailing  down  the  Tiber  to  Civita  Vecchia,  from  thence  pass- 
ing through  several  seas  to  the  mouth  of  the  Neva,  then 
went  up  that,  and,  crossing  the  lake  Ladoga  into  the  Vol- 
khoff,  arrived  at  the  city  before  named.  Besides  this  ex- 
traordinary voyage,  he  wrought  several  other  miracles  as 
soon  as  he  landed  where  the  monastery  now  stands  that  is 
dedicated  to  him ;  one  was,  to  order  a  company  of  fisher- 
men to  cast  their  nets  into  the  sea;  which  having  done, 
they  immediately  drew  up,  with  a  great  quantity  of  fish,  a 
large  trunk  containing  several  church  ornaments,  sacred 
utensils,  and  priestly  vestments  for  celebrating  the  liturgy, 
which  the  Russians,  as  well  as  the  Eastern  Greeks,  believe 
was  first  performed  at  Rome  in  the  same  manner  and  with 
the  same  ceremonies  as  they  themselves  use  at  this  time. 


I74  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

The  people  tell  you  further  that  he  built  himself  a  little  cell, 
in  which  he  ended  his  days.  In  this  place  there  now  stands 
a  chapel,  in  which  they  say  he  was  buried,  and  that  his 
body  remains  as  uncorrupted  as  at  the  instant  of  his  death. 
Over  the  door  of  the  cell  the  monks  show  a  millstone, 
which  they  endeavor  to  make  the  ignorant  people  believe 
is  the  very  same  that  the  saint  sailed  upon  from  Rome,  and 
to  which  great  devotions  were  once  paid,  and  many  offerings 
made  till  the  time  Peter  the  Great  made  himself  sovereign 
pontiff." 

To  this  saint,  or  to  Saint  Nicholas,  we  forget  which,  let- 
ters of  introduction  were  always  addressed  by  the  priests, 
and  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  dead  when  laid  in  their 
coffins.  The  superstition  of  the  Russians  is  grosser  and 
more  puerile  than  that  of  any  people  purporting  to  be 
Christians.  They  would  rather  starve  than  eat  pigeons, 
because  the  Holy  Ghost  assumed  the  form  of  a  dove ;  they 
dip  their  new-born  children  into  the  Neva  in  January, 
through  holes  cut  in  the  ice,  directly  after  the  ceremony  of 
blessing  the  water  has  been  concluded  by  the  Patriarch ; 
and  it  would  be  an  easy  but  endless  task  to  enumerate  other 
similar  absurdities.  It  may  be  supposed  that  the  patriarch- 
al dignity,  founded  upon  superstition  as  solid  as  this,  would 
be  a  difficult  power  to  contend  with.  It  was  so.  The  Pa- 
triarch's power  was  enormous.  He  pronounced  sentence 
of  life,  and  death,  and  torture,  without  intervention  of  any 
tribunal.  On  Palm  Sunday  he  rode  to  church  upon  an  ass 
"  caparisoned  in  white  linen,"  at  the  head  of  a  long  proces- 
sion of  ecclesiastical  and  civil  dignitaries,  with  a  miter  upon 
his  head,  and  "skirts  of  many  colors,  three  or  four  ells 
long,"  borne  by  a  band  of  young  men,  while  the  Czar  walked 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  I75 

uncovered  by  his  side,  holding  the  bridle  of  the  beast  upon 
his  arm. 

This  dignity,  which  had  been  established  by  a  sort  of 
accident  in  the  year  1588,  up  to  which  time  the  Russian 
Church  acknowledged  the  supremacy  of  the  Patriarch  of 
Constantinople,  had  grown  to  be  very  distasteful  to  Peter. 
The  Church  was  the  greatest  possible  enemy  to  his  plans  of 
reformation.  The  bigotry  of  its  opposition  to  all  his  pro- 
jects was  insurmountable.  Besides,  it  was  very  inconveni- 
ent that  any  one  should  have  any  power  or  any  rights  except 
himself.  He  determined  to  annihilate  the  office  of  Patri- 
arch, and  to  place  himself  at  the  head  of  the  Church.  We 
do  not  find,  however,  that  he  thought  it  necessary  to  go 
through  an  apprenticeship  in  this  profession,  as  he  had  done 
in  others ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  upon  the  death  of  the  Patri- 
arch Adrian,  which  happened  about  this  time,  he  simply 
appointed  himself  pontifex  maximus,  and  declined  nominat- 
ing any  other  Patriarch.  The  man  who  had  destroyed  the 
Janizaries,  cut  off  the  beards  of  his  subjects,  and  changed 
the  course  of  the  sun,  was  also  strong  enough  to  trample  the 
prelate's  miter  in  the  dust.  He  was  entirely  successful  in 
his  contest  with  the  Church.  The  clergy  made  but  a  feeble 
resistance.  The  printing-press,  to  be  sure,  which  he  had 
first  introduced  into  Russia,  swarmed  with  libels  upon  him, 
and  denounced  him  as  Antichrist ;  but  he  was  defended 
by  others  of  the  clergy,  "  because  the  number  six  hundred 
and  sixty-six  was  not  found  in  his  name,  and  he  had  not 
the  sign  of  the  beast." 

Before  the  close  of  the  year  1702  the  troops  of  the  Czar 
had  driven  the  Swedes  from  the  Ladoga  and  the  Neva,  and 
had  taken  possession  of  all  the  ports  in  Carelia  and  Ingria. 


176  PETER   THE  GREAT. 

On  the  1 6th  of  May,  without  waiting  another  moment  after 
having  possessed  himself  of  the  locality,  he  begins  to  build 
his  metropolis.  One  hundred  thousand  miserable  workmen 
are  consumed  in  the  first  twelve  months,  succumbing  to  the 
rigorous  climate  and  the  unhealthy  position.  But  "  il  faut 
casser  des  ceufs  pour  faire  une  omelette" ;  in  one  year's  time 
there  are  thirty  thousand  houses  in  Petersburg.  Never  was 
there  such  a  splendid  improvisation.  Look  for  a  moment  at 
a  map  of  Russia  and  say  if  Petersburg  was  not  a  magnificent 
piece  of  volition — a  mistake,  certainly,  and  an  extensive 
one — but  still  a  magnificent  mistake.  Upon  a  delta,  formed 
by  the  dividing  branches  of  the  Neva — upon  a  miserable 
morass  half  under  water,  without  stones,  without  clay,  with- 
out earth,  without  wood,  without  building  materials  of  any 
kind — having  behind  it  the  outlet  of  the  lake  Ladoga  and 
its  tributary  swamps,  and  before  it  the  Gulf  of  Finland  con- 
tracting itself  into  a  narrow  compass,  and  ready  to  deluge  it 
with  all  the  waters  of  the  Baltic  whenever  the  southwest 
wind  should  blow  a  gale  eight  and  forty  hours — with  a  cli- 
mate of  polar  severity,  and  a  soil  as  barren  as  an  iceberg — 
was  not  Petersburg  a  bold  impromptu?  We  never  could 
look  at  this  capital,  with  its  imposing  though  monotonous 
architecture,  its  colossal  squares,  its  vast  colonnades,  its 
endless  vistas,  its  spires  and  minarets  sheathed  in  barbaric 
gold  and  flashing  in  the  sun,  and  remember  the  magical 
rapidity  with  which  it  was  built,  and  the  hundred  thousand 
lives  that  were  sacrificed  in  building  it,  without  recalling 
Milton's  description  of  the  building  of  Pandemonium  : 

"  Anon  out  of  the  earth  a  fabric  huge 
.  Rose  like  an  exhalation,  .  .  . 
Built  like  a  temple,  where  pilasters  round 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  I77 

Were  set,  and  Doric  pillars  overlaid 

With  golden  architrave  ;  nor  did  there  want 

Cornice  or  frieze,  with  bossy  sculptures  graven ; 

The  roof  was  fretted  gold.     Not  Babylon 

Nor  great  Alcairo  such  magnificence 

Equaled  in  all  their  glories,  to  enshrine 

Belus  or  Serapis  their  gods,  or  seat 

Their  kings,  when  Egypt  with  Assyria  strove 

In  wealth  and  luxury.     The  ascending  pile 

Stood  fixed  her  stately  height ;  and  straight  the  doors 

Opening  their  brazen  folds  discover,  wide 

Within,  her  ample  spaces  o'er  the  smooth 

And  level  pavement." 

Within  a  few  months  after  the  foundation  of  Petersburg 
and  Cronstadt,  Peter  had  the  pleasure  of  piloting  into  his 
new  seaport  with  his  own  hands  a  vessel  belonging  to  his 
old  friend  Cornelius  Calf,  of  Saardam.  The  transfer  of  the 
seat  of  government,  by  the  removal  of  the  Senate  from  Mos- 
cow to  Petersburg,  was  effected  a  few  years  afterward.  Since 
that  time,  the  repudiated  Oriental  capital  of  the  ancient 
Czars,  the  magnificent  Moscow,  with  her  golden  tiara  and 
her  Eastern  robe,  has  sat,  like  Hagar  in  the  wilderness, 
deserted  'and  lonely  in  all  her  barbarian  beauty.  Yet  even 
now,  in  many  a  backward  look  and  longing  sigh  she  reads 
plainly  enough  that  she  is  not  forgotten  by  her  sovereign, 
that  she  is  still  at  heart  preferred,  and  that  she  will  eventu- 
ally triumph  over  her  usurping  and  artificial  rival. 

The  building  of  Petersburg  in  a  year  was,  however,  a 

mere  aside  in  the  great  military  drama  that  was  going  on. 

Peter  founded  this  city  as  soon  as  he  had  won  a  place  for  it; 

but  the  war  still  went  on.     While  the  Czar  was  erecting  his 

'12 


178  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

capital,  establishing  woolen  manufactures,  and  importing 
sheep  from  Saxony,  Charles  XII.  was  knocking  the  Elector 
of  Saxony  off  the  Polish  throne,  putting  Stanislaus  Leckzin- 
sky  in  his  place,  and  ravaging  all  Poland  and  Saxony.  The 
scenes  of  the  great  drama  which  occupied  the  next  few 
years,  but  which  we  have  no  intention  of  sketching,  opened 
in  Poland,  and  closed  on  the  confines  of  Turkey.  It  is  a 
magnificent,  eventful,  important  drama,  a  chapter  of  history 
which  has  been  often  written  and  is  familiar  to  almost  every 
one,  and  yet  which  would  well  bear  handling  again.  There 
is  no  life  of  Peter  which  is  in  all  respects  satisfactory,  which 
does  not  partake  too  much  of  eulogium  or  censure  in  its  es- 
timation of  his  character ;  and  there  is  none  which  develops 
with  sufficient  accuracy  and  impartiality,  and  in  a  sufficiently 
striking  manner,  the  stirring  events  of  the  great  Northern 
war.  The  brilliant  drama  enacted  in  the  first  fifteen  years 
of  the  present  century — forming  probably  the  most  splendid 
chapter  in  the  military  history  of  the  world,  and  which  is 
still  so  fresh  in  the  minds  of  men — has  thrown  into  compara- 
tive oblivion  the  very  picturesque  and  imposing  scenes  which 
were  displayed  in  the  first  fifteen  years  of  the  eighteenth. 
And  yet  what  a  magnificent  subject  for  the  historical  painter, 
what  imposing  personages,  what  dramatic  catastrophes,  what 
sudden  and  bewildering  reverses,  what  wild  scenery,  what 
Salvator-like  chiaroscuro — dark  Sarmatian  forests  enveloping 
the  actors  in  mystery  and  obscurity,  with  flashes  of  light 
breaking  iipon  the  anxious  suspense  of  Europe,  and  reveal- 
ing portentous  battles,  sieges,  and  hair-breadth  escapes — 
what  "  dreadful  marches "  through  the  wilderness,  what 
pitched  combats,  upon  whose  doubtful  result  hinged,  as  al- 
most never  before  or  since,  the  weal  or  woe  of  millions,  and 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  I79 

in  which  kings  fought  sword  in  hand  in  the  hottest  of  the 
fight,  with  their  crowns  staked  upon  the  issue ! 

There  was  always  something  very  exciting  to  our  imagi- 
nation in  the  characters  of  the  three  kings  who  were  the 
principal  actors  in  the  Northern  war.  There  seemed  to  be 
a  strange,  fitful,  mythical  character  about  the  war  and  the 
men  who  waged  it.  The  Elector  Augustus  of  Saxony,  King 
of  Poland,  with  his  superhuman  and  almost  fabulous  physi- 
cal strength,  his  personal  bravery,  his  showy,  chivalrous 
character,  his  world-renowned  adventures  in  a  gentler  field, 
familiar  to  posterity  through  the  records  of  "  La  Saxe  ga- 
lante,"  is  a  striking  personage.  It  is  astonishing  that  such 
a  magnificent  Lothario  should  have  chosen,  for  the  barren 
honor  of  being  elected  to  the  Polish  throne,  to  exchange  the 
brilliant  and  voluptuous  gayety  of  his  own  court  for  "  the 
bloody  noses  and  cracked  crowns  "  which  were  "  passing 
current "  in  Poland.  But  it  is  still  more  astonishing  that, 
having  once  engaged  in  the  affair,  he  should  have  cut  such 
a  miserable  figure  in  it.  The  splendid  Augustus,  Augustus 
the  Strong,  Augustus  the  Gallant,  became  merely  the  anvil 
for  the  sledge-hammers  of  Charles  and  Peter.  He  made  a 
fool  of  himself;  he  disgraced  himself  more  than  it  seemed 
possible  for  a  human  being  to  disgrace  himself;  he  humili- 
ated himself  more  completely,  more  stupidly,  because  more 
unnecessarily,  than  it  seemed  possible  for  the  greatest  idiot, 
as  well  as  the  most  arrant  coward,  to  humiliate  himself.  He 
lost  his  crown  at  the  very  start,  went  down  on  his  knees  in 
the  dirt  to  pick  it  up  again,  made  a  secret  treaty  with 
Charles,  renouncing  his  alliance  with  the  Czar,  deserted  his 
ally  with  incredible  folly  just  as  the  Russians  in  conjunction 
with  his  own  troops  were  gaining  a  brilliant  victory  and  en- 


I8o  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

taring  Warsaw  in  triumph,  concealed  his  shameful  negotia- 
tion from  his  own  generals,  while  at  the  same  time  he  wrote 
a  letter  to  Charles,  apologizing  for  having  gained  a  victory, 
and  assuring  him  that  he  had  intended  to  have  drawn  off  his 
troops  and  deserted  to  the  enemy,  but  that  his  orders  had 
not  been  obeyed,  and  then  sneaked  off  to  Charles's  camp, 
where,  in  obedience  to  that  monarch's  orders,  he  capped  the 
climax  of  his  shame  by  writing  a  letter  of  sincere  and  hum- 
ble congratulation  to  Stanislaus  Leckzinsky  for  supplanting 
him  upon  his  own  throne.  Peter,  in  the  sequel,  put  his 
crown  on  his  head  again,  to  be  sure ;  but  for  ever  after  he 

looked  like 

" ....  the  thief, 

Who  from  the  shelf  the  precious  diadem  stole, 
And  put  it  in  his  pocket." 

What  a  pity  that  this  man,  who  was  deficient  neither  in 
courage  nor,  we  suppose,  in  a  certain  amount  of  intellect 
sufficient  for  all  ordinary  purposes,  should  have  got  himself 
into  such  a  scrape  merely  for  the  sake  of  carrying  an  elec- 
tion over  the  Prince  of  Conti  and  Stanislaus  !  The  truth 
was  that,  the  moment  he  got  among  giants — giants  in  action, 
like  Charles  and  Peter — he  showed  himself  the  pygmy  he 
was  in  mind,  despite  his  stature,  his  strength,  and  his  per- 
sonal bravery. 

And  Charles  XII.,  the  hero,  the  crowned  gladiator — 
what  had  he  to  do  with  the  eighteenth  century  ?  The  hero 
of  everybody's  boyhood,  he  remains  a  puzzle  and  a  mystery 
to  us  in  our  maturer  years.  He  seems  an  impossibility  in 
the  times  in  which  he  lived.  On  the  death  of  Charles  XI., 
and  the  commencement  of  the  hostile  movement  by  Russia 
and  Denmark,  the  stripling  sovereign  seems  to  dilate  into 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  !8i 

the  vast,  shadowy  proportions  of  some  ancient  hero  of  Scan- 
dinavian Sagas.  He  seems  like  one  of  the  ancient  Norse- 
men, whose  vocation  was  simply  to  fight — who  conquered 
the  whole  earth,  not  because  they  wanted  it,  but  because 
they  were  sent  into  the  world  for  no  other  earthly  purpose ; 
a  legitimate  representative  of  the  old  Sea-Kings,  or  rather 
an  ancient  Sea-King  himself,  reappearing  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  with  no  specially  defined  object,  and  proposing  to 
himself  no  particular  business  in  the  world  which  he  had  so 
suddenly  revisited,  but  to  fight  as  much  as  possible,  and 
with  anybody  that  came  along.  Viewed  in  this  light,  he  can 
be  judged  more  justly.  He  was  out  of  place  where  he  was. 
He  would  have  been  a  magnificent  hero  and  a  useful  per- 
sonage six  or  seven  hundred  years  earlier.  He  was  a  very 
mischievous  character  in  the  eighteenth  century.  People  no 
longer  fought  in  the  same  way  as  before  ;  they  no  longer 
fought  for  the  fun  of  it ;  they  now  had  always  an  object  in 
their  wars.  Sovereigns,  however  belligerent  in  taste,  had 
always  an  eye  to  their  interest.  This  was  preeminently  the 
case  with  his  great  antagonist,  Peter.  He  never  fought  ex- 
cept for  an  object ;  but,  sooner  than  relinquish  the  object, 
he  would  have  fought  till  "  sun  and  moon  were  in  the  flat 
sea  sunk."  He  was  a  creator,  a  founder,  a  lawgiver,  as  well 
as  a  warrior.  He  was  constructive ;  Charles  merely  destruc- 
tive. The  Czar  was  a  great  statesman  ;  Charles  only  a  great 
gladiator.  In  war,  Peter  was  always  preparing  for  peace ; 
as  for  Charles,  after  he  first  started  upon  his  career,  he  never 
seemed  to  have  had  the  faintest  suspicion  that  there  was  such 
a  thing,  such  a  status,  as  peace.  He  came  into  the  world  to 
fight,  and  he  fought ;  he  lived  fighting,  he  died  fighting.  He 
poured  himself  out,  like  a  fierce  torrent  from  his  native 


182  PETER   THE  GREAT. 

mountains,  in  one  wild,  headlong,  devastating  flood.  There 
was  nothing  beneficent,  nothing  fertilizing,  in  his  career. 
His  kingdom  was  neglected,  his  treasury  exhausted,  his  sub- 
jects impoverished ;  while  he  himself,  from  the  admiration 
and  wonder  of  Europe,  became,  or  would  have  become,  but 
for  his  timely  death,  its  laughing-stock.  The  hero  at  Narva 
was  only  Bombastes  Furioso  at  Bender. 

While  Charles  was  deposing  Augustus  and  crowning 
Stanislaus,  the  troops  of  Peter  were  not  idle.  Keeping 
his  eye  ever  fixed  upon  his  great  object,  the  Czar  was 
adding  to  his  domain  province  after  province  of  what 
was  then  the  Swedish  seacoast.  Dorpat  and  Narva  are 
captured,  and  with  them  all  Ingria,  of  which  Peter  makes 
the  pastry-cook's  apprentice  Governor.  Courland  soon  fol- 
lows, and  now  the  Czar  joins  his  forces  to  those  of  Augus- 
tus in  Poland.  While  he  is  called  off  to  quell  an  insur- 
rection in  Astrakhan  (distances  are  nothing  to  the  Czar), 
Augustus  seizes  the  opportunity  to  make  the  ignominious 
compact  with  the  Swedish  king  to  which  we  have  referred, 
and- — most  shameful  and  perfidious  part  of  his  treason — 
surrenders  to  the  vengeance  of  the  ferocious  Charles,  to  the 
torture  and  the  wheel,  the  unfortunate  General  Patkul,  am- 
bassador of  the  Czar  at  the  court  of  Augustus,  who  had 
incurred  the  hatred  of  the  Swedish  monarch  for  heading  a 
deputation  of  Livonian  nobles,  and  presenting  to  him  a 
petition  concerning  the  rights  and  privileges  of  their  prov- 
ince. The  allies  of  King  Augustus  take  possession  of  War- 
saw, while  King  Augustus  himself  is  writing  his  congratula- 
tions to  King  Stanislaus. 

Peter,  having  helped  himself  to  almost  as  many  Swedish 
provinces  as  he  cared  for,  while  Charles  has  been  bullying 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


183 


Augustus  and  breaking  Patkul  on  the  wheel,  is  now  dis- 
posed to  treat  for  peace.  The  French  envoy  at  Dresden 
offers  his  services,  but  Charles  declines  treating  except  at 
Moscow.  "  My  brother  Charles  wishes  to  act  Alexander," 
says  the  Czar;  "but  he  shall  not  find  me  Darius." 

Peter  now  conceives  almost  exactly  the  same  plan  by 
which  the  conqueror  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  en- 
trapped and  destroyed.  He  makes  his  country  and  climate 
fight  for  him,  and  retreats  slowly  before  his  advancing 
enemy,  drawing  him  on  step  by  step  to  a  barren  country, 
whence  he  could  have  no  retreat,  and  where  Peter  could 
suddenly  advance  from  his  own  secure  position  and  over- 
whelm him  at  a  blow.  With  masterly  generalship  he  re- 
treats before  his  hot-headed  adversary,  still  "  tempting  him 
to  the  desert  with  his  sword,"  marches  to  Mohilev  and 
Orsha  on  the  eastern  bank  of  the  Dnieper,  a  position 
in  free  communication  with  Smolensk,  sends  his  Cossacks 
to  lay  waste  the  country  for  thirty  miles  round,  and  then 
orders  them  to  join  him  beyond  the  Borysthenes.  The 
two  Northern  monarchs  now  disappear  from  the  eyes  of 
anxious  Europe  among  the  wildernesses  of  ancient  Scythia. 
Peter,  with  a  hundred  thousand  men  well  provided  and  in 
convenient  communication  with  his  own  cities  and  maga- 
zines, remains  quiet.  Charles,  intent  upon  dictating  terms 
at  Moscow,  crosses  the  Borysthenes  with  eighty  thousand 
men.  A  fierce  battle  without  results  is  fought  on  the 
Beresina,  Charles  pushes  on  to  Smolensk.  By  order  of 
Peter  the  country  between  the  Borysthenes  and  Smolensk 
had  been  laid  waste.  At  the  approach  of  winter  the 
Swedish  army  dwindles  and  wastes  away  beneath  the 
horrors  of  the  iron  climate.  Still  Charles  advances,  when 


1 84  PETER   THE  GREAT. 

suddenly,  and  to  the  Czar  inexplicably,  he  turns  aside 
from  his  path,  abandons  his  design  upon  Moscow,  and  di- 
rects his  steps  to  the  Ukraine.  The  mystery  is  solved  by 
the  news  of  Mazeppa's  treason.  The  old  Hetman  of  the 
Cossacks  deserts  to  Charles,  promising  to  bring  over  all  his 
troops:  he  brings  no  one  but  himself;  the  Cossacks  scorn 
his  treachery,  and  remain  faithful  to  their  Czar. 

By  this  time  it  was  December,  the  cold  intense,  and,  the 
Swedish  army  perishing  by  thousands,  Count  Piper  implores 
his  master  to  halt  and  go  into  the  best  winter-quarters 
they  could  find  in  the  Ukraine.  The  King  refuses,  resolved 
to  reduce  the  Ukraine,  and  then  march  to  Moscow.  In 
the  month  of  May,  after  a  winter  spent  by  the  Czar's  forces 
in  comfortable  quarters  and  by  the  King's  exposed  to  all 
kinds  of  misery,  Charles  lays  siege  to  Pultowa  with  eighteen 
thousand  men,  the  remnant  of  his  eighty  thousand.  On 
the  i5th  of  June,  1709,  the  Czar  appears  before  Pultowa, 
and,  by  feint  of  attack  upon  the  Swedes,  succeeds  in  throw- 
ing two  thousand  men  into  the  place,  and  at  length,  a  few 
days  after,  gives  him  battle  and  utterly  routs  and  destroys 
his  army.  Both  the  King  and  the  Czar,  throughout  this 

" .  .  .  .  dread  Pultowa's  day, 
When  fortune  left  the  royal  Swede," 

fight  in  the  front  of  the  battle.  Several  balls  pierce  the 
Czar's  clothes;  while  Charles,  having  been  previously 
wounded  in  the  heel,  is  carried  through  the  fight  upon 
a  litter.  After  the  total  overthrow  of  his  army  Charles 
escapes  on  horseback  with  a  handful  of  followers,  and, 
entering  the  confines  of  Turkey,  halts  at  Bender  on  the 
Dniester. 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


185 


The  battle  of  Pultowa  and  the  final  overthrow  of 
Charles  are  followed  during  the  autumn  and  winter  by 
the  complete  conquest  of  Livonia — Viborg,  Elbing,  Riga, 
and  Revel  being  taken  early  in  1710.  At  the  same  time 
Peter  deposes  Stanislaus  and  restores  the  illustrious  Au- 
gustus. 

In  the  mean  time  Charles  remains  at  Bender,  the  sti- 
pendiary of  the  Sultan,  while  Poniatowski,  his  emissary  at 
the  Porte,  is  busily  intriguing  to  bring  about  a  declaration 
of  war  from  Turkey  against  the  Czar.  In  conjunction  with 
the  Khan  of  the  Crimean  Tartars,  who  appeals  to  the  Sul- 
tan's jealousy  of  the  increasing  power  of  Russia,  and 
inspires  him  with  a  desire  to  recover  Azov  and  expel  his 
encroaching  neighbors  from  the  Black  Sea,  the  envoy  suc- 
ceeds. The  Grand  Mufti  declares  that  it  is  necessary  for 
the  Sultan  to  go  to  war  with  the  Czar;  whereupon  the 
Muscovite  ambassador  is  forthwith  " clapped  into  prison" 
by  way  of  commencement  of  hostilities,  and  the  war  be- 
gins. Peter  immediately  makes  a  levy  of  one  man  in  four, 
besides  one  "  valet  out  of  every  two  belonging  to  the  nobil- 
ity," makes  a  solemn  declaration  of  war,  and  then  marches 
at  the  head  of  forty  thousand  men  to  the  frontier  of  Tur- 
key. Previously  to  his  departure  he  makes  a  public  proc- 
lamation of  his  previous  marriage  to  Catharine;  and  the 
Empress,  despite  his  earnest  remonstrances,  accompanies  the 
invading  army. 

It  is  strange  that  the  Czar  on  this  expedition  should 
have  committed  the  same  error,  and  placed  himself  in  al- 
most the  same  unfortunate  predicament,  as  his  adversary 
Charles.  Trusting  to  the  representations  and  the  friend- 
ship of  the  faithless  Hospodar  of  Moldavia,  he  advances 


186  PETER   THE  GREAT. 

rapidly  at  the  head  of  an  insufficient  force  into  a  hostile 
and  barren  country,  relying  for  men  and  munitions  of  war 
upon  his  ally.  Crossing  the  Pruth,  he  finds  himself  near 
Jassy,  in  a  hostile  country  between  an  army  of  Turks  and 
another  of  Tartars,  with  a  deep  and  rapid  river  between 
him  and  his  own  dominions.  Forty  thousand  Russians  are 
held  at  bay  by  two  hundred  thousand  Turks  and  Tartars. 
The  situation  of  the  Czar  is  terrible  ;  annihilation  seems  to 
stare  him  in  the  face.  His  enemy  Charles  visits  the  Turkish 
camp  in  disguise,  urging  the  Czar's  destruction  upon  the 
Vizier.  A  destructive  battle  is  going  on  unceasingly,  which 
in  three  days  costs  him  eighteen  thousand  men.  Retreat  is 
impossible ;  no  ally  is  near  him,  no  succor  expected.  What 
can  possibly  extricate  him  ?  Shall  he  dash  upon  the  Turks 
at  the  head  of  his  remaining  forces  and  cut  his  way  through 
them,  or  die,  sword  in  hand,  in  the  attempt  ?  Shall  he  sur- 
render to  the  overwhelming  power  of  the  Sultan's  army, 
and  be  paraded  at  Constantinople  as  the  captive  Czar? 
Tortured  and  perplexed,  he  shuts  himself  up  alone  in  his 
tent  and  falls  into  terrible  convulsions.  None  of  his  gen- 
erals dare  approach  him ;  he  has  forbidden  an  entrance  to 
all.  Suddenly,  in  spite  of  the  prohibition,  the  captive  of 
Marienburg  stands  before  him.  She  who  at  all  times  pos- 
sessed a  mysterious  power  to  calm  the  spasmodic  affections, 
half  physical,  half  mental,  to  which  he  was  subject,  now 
appears  before  him  like  an  angel  to  relieve  his  agony  and  to 
point  out  an  escape  from  impending  ruin.  She  suggests  the 
idea  of  negotiation,  which  had  occurred  to  no  one  in  the 
desperate  situation  in  which  they  were  placed,  and  which 
she  instinctively  prophesied  would  still  be  successful.  She 
strips  herself  of  her  jewels,  and  ransacks  the  camp  for 


PETER   THE  GREAT.  jgy 

objects  of  value  to  form  a  suitable  present  for  the  Grand 
Vizier.  The  Vice-Chancellor  Shaffiroff  is  dispatched  to  the 
enemy's  camp,  and  the  apparently  impossible  result  is  a 
treaty  of  peace.  Arms  are  suspended  immediately,  and 
soon  afterward  honorable  articles  are  signed,  of  which  the 
principal  are  the  surrender  of  Azov,  the  exclusion  of  the 
Czar  from  the  Black  Sea,  the  demolition  of  the  fortress  of 
Taganrog,  the  withdrawal  of  the  Russian  soldiers  from  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Danube,  and  the  promise  of  free  pas- 
sage to  Charles  XII.  through  Russia  to  his  own  states. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  analyse  or  to  criticize  the  different 
motives  that  actuated  the  Vizier  in  acceding  to  an  honorable 
negotiation,  when  the  Czar  seemed  to  be  so  completely  in 
his  power.  It  is  sufficient  that  this  was  the  surprising  and 
fortunate  result  of  Catharine's  counsel.  "  Her  great  merit," 
says  Voltaire,  "  was  that  she  saw  the  possibility  of  negotia- 
tion at  a  moment  when  the  generals  seem  to  have  seen 
nothing  but  an  inevitable  misfortune."  No  language  can 
describe  the  rage  and  mortification  of  Charles  XII.  at  this 
unexpected  result — at  this  apparently  impossible  escape  of 
his  hated  rival  from  overwhelming  ruin.  Hastening  to  the 
camp  of  the  Vizier,  he  upbraids  him,  as  if  he  had  been  his 
master  instead  of  his  stipendiary ;  he  expresses  his  profound 
disgust  that  the  Czar  has  not  been  carried  to  Constantinople, 
instead  of  being  allowed  to  go  home  so  easily.  "  And  who 
will  govern  his  empire  in  his  absence  ?  "  asked  the  Vizier, 
with  bitter  irony,  adding  that  "  it  would  never  to  do  have  all 
the  sovereigns  away  from  home."  In  answer  to  this  retort, 
Charles  grins  ferociously  in  his  face,  turns  on  his  heel,  and 
tears  the  Vizier's  robe  with  his  spurs.  After  thus  insulting 
the  great  functionary  of  the  Sultan,  he  continues  three  years 


1 88  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

longer  a  pensionary  upon  his  bounty.  To  the  reiterated 
entreaties  of  his  Senate,  that  he  would  return,  and  attend  to 
the  pressing  exigencies  of  his  kingdom,  he  replies,  in  a  style 
worthy  of  Bombastes,  that  he  would  send  one  of  his  boots 
to  govern  them,  and  remains  at  Bender,  still  deluded  and 
besotted  with  the  idea  that  he  should  yet  appear  with  a 
Turkish  force  before  Moscow.  At  last,  in  1714,  after  fight- 
ing a  pitched  battle  at  the  head  of  his  valets,  grooms,  and 
house-servants,  against  a  considerable  Turkish  army,  sent 
to  dislodge  him  by  force,  he  is  ignominiously  expelled  from 
the  country  whose  hospitality  he  has  so  long  outraged,  and 
returns  in  the  disguise  of  a  courier  to  Sweden. 

The  Czar  upon  his  return  to  his  dominions  gains  a  con- 
siderable victory  over  the  Swedish  fleet  in  the  Baltic,  com- 
manding his  own  in  person  in  a  line-of-battle  ship  of  his 
own  building.  On  arriving  at  Petersburg  he  ordains  a  great 
triumphal  procession  to  bring  the  captured  ships  with  their 
admirals  and  officers  up  the  Neva.  At  this  time  he  trans- 
fers the  Senate  from  Moscow  to  Petersburg,  establishes  as- 
semblies, at  which  the  penalty  for  infringement  of  the  rules 
and  regulations  is  to  "  empty  the  great  eagle,  a  huge  bowl, 
filled  with  wine  and  brandy,"  institutes  the  Academy  of 
Arts  and  Sciences,  founds  the  public  library  commenced 
with  the  one  captured  ("  conveyed,  the  wise  it  call  ")  from 
the  University  at  Abo,  sends  a  mission  through  Siberia  to 
China,  and  draws  up  a  map  of  his  dominions,  much  of  it 
with  his  own  hand. 

In  1715,  after  taking  Stralsund,  completing  the  conquest 
of  Finland  and  Esthonia,  and  commanding  in  person  the 
allied  fleets  of  England,  Denmark,  and  Russia,  he  makes  a 
second  tour  in  Europe,  accompanied  by  Catharine.  He 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  ^9 

revisits  Saardam,  where  he  is  received  with  great  enthusiasm, 
is  entertained  with  great  distinction  in  Paris,  and  visits  the 
tomb  of  Cardinal  Richelieu,  where  he  exclaims,  dropping 
upon  his  knees,  "  Thou  great  man,  I  would  have  given  thee 
half  of  my  dominions  to  have  learned  of  thee  to  govern  the 
other  half."  He  drew  up  with  his  own  hand  a  treaty  of 
commerce  with  France,  and  returned  through  Berlin  to 
Petersburg.  The  letters  of  the  Margravine  of  Baireuth 
from  Berlin  present  no  very  flattering  picture  of  the  im- 
perial travelers.  She  describes  Peter  as  dressed  plainly  in 
a  naval  costume,  handsome,  but  rude,  uncouth,  and  of 
dreadful  aspect;  and  Catharine  as  fat,  frouzy,  and  vulgar, 
needing  only  to  be  seen  to  betray  her  obscure  origin,  and 
bedizened  with  chains,  orders,  and  holy  relics,  "  making 
such  a  Geklinkklank  as  if  an  ass  with  bells  were  coming 
along  "  ;  she  represents  them  both  as  intolerable  beggars, 
plundering  the  palace  of  everything  they  could  lay  their 
hands  on. 

Peter  had  long  ago  constituted  himself  the  head  of  the 
Church,  and  treated  with  contempt  the  pretensions  of  the 
prelates  to  temporal  power.  When  at  Paris,  however,  he 
had  received  an  elaborate  petition  from  the  Sorbonne,  the 
object  of  which  was  to  effect  a  reunion  between  the  Greek 
and  Latin  Churches.  But  the  despot  who  had  constituted 
himself  the  head,  hand,  heart,  and  conscience  of  his  people 
— who  had  annihilated  throughout  his  empire  every  element 
of  power  adverse  to  his  own — who  had  crushed  the  soldiery, 
the  nobility,  and  the  clergy,  deposed  the  Patriarch,  and 
constituted  himself  the  high  priest  of  his  empire — was  not 
very  likely  to  comply  with  the  Sorbonne's  invitation  to 
acknowledge  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope  in  his  dominions. 


i9o  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

Nevertheless,  he  received  their  petition  with  great  polite- 
ness. 

On  his  return  to  Petersburg,  he  was  vexed  by  the  im- 
portunity of  some  of  his  own  clergy,  who  clamored  for  the 
appointment  of  a  Patriarch,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  de- 
manded by  the  people,  and  that  it  was  necessary  to  assert 
the  dignity  and  independence  of  the  Greek  Church.  Now 
there  happened  to  be  about  Petersburg  one  Sotoff,  a  vener- 
able jester  of  eighty-four,  who  had  been  the  Czar's  writing- 
master  in  his  younger  years,  and  at  the  age  of  seventy  had 
been  advanced  to  the  dignity  of  buffoon.  This  venerable 
individual  the  Czar  fixes  upon  for  the  office  of  Patriarch, 
previously  creating  him  a  prince  and  a  pope.  In  order  to 
make  the  office  of  Patriarch  completely  ridiculous  in  the 
eyes  of  the  people,  and  to  give  them  a  little  innocent  recre- 
ation at  the  same  time,  he  now  ordains  a  solemn  marriage 
between  this  Patriarch  and  a  "  buxom  widow  of  thirty-four." 
We  must  ask  indulgence  while  we  quote  a  short  description 
of  this  funny  ceremony  from  the  old  author  already  cited : 

The  nuptials  of  this  extraordinary  couple  were  solemnized  by 
the  court  in  masks  or  mock  show.  The  company  consisted  of 
about  four  hundred  persons  of  both  sexes.  Every  four  persons  had 
their  proper  dress  and  peculiar  musical  instruments,  so  that  they 
represented  a  hundred  different  sorts  of  habits  and  music,  particu- 
larly of  the  Asiatic  nations.  The  four  persons  appointed  to  invite 
the  guests  were  the  greatest  stammerers  that  could  be  found  in  all 
Russia.  Old,  decrepit  men,  who  were  not  able  to  walk  or  stand, 
had  been  picked  out  to  serve  for  bridesmen,  stewards,  and  waiters. 
There  were  four  running  footmen,  the  most  unwieldy  fellows,  who 
had  been  troubled  with  the  gout  most  of  their  lives,  and  were  so  fat 
and  bulky  that  they  wanted  others  to  lead  them.  The  mock  Czar 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  I9r 

of  Moscow,  who  represented  King  David  in  his  dress,  instead  of  a 
harp,  had  a  lyre  with  a  bear-skin  to  play  upon.  He,  being  the  chief 
of  the  company,  was  carried  on  a  sort  of  a  pageant  placed  on  a  sled, 
to  the  four  corners  of  which  were  tied  as  many  bears,  which,  being 
pricked  with  goads  by  fellows  purposely  appointed  for  it,  made 
such  a  frightful  roaring  as  well  suited  the  confused  and  horrible  din 
raised  by  the  disagreeing  instruments  of  the  rest  of  the  company. 
The  Czar  himself  was  dressed  like  a  boor  of  Friesland,  and  skillfully 
beat  a  drum  in  company  with  three  generals.  In  this  manner,  bells 
ringing  everywhere,  the  ill-matched  couple  were  attended  by  the 
masks  to  the  altar  of  the  great  church,  where  they  were  joined  in 
matrimony  by  a  priest  a  hundred  years  old,  who  had  lost  his  eye- 
sight and  his  memory ;  to  supply  which  defect  a  pair  of  spectacles 
were  put  upon  his  nose,  two  candles  held  before  his  eyes,  and  the 
words  sounded  into  his  ears,  which  he  was  to  pronounce.  From 
church  the  procession  went  to  the  Czar's  palace,  where  the  diver- 
sion lasted  some  days.  Many  strange  adventures  and  comical  acci- 
dents happened  on  their  riding-sleds  through  the  streets,  too  long 
to  be  related  here.  Thus  much  may  suffice  to  show  that  the  Czar, 
among  all  the  heavy  cares  of  government,  knew  how  to  set  apart 
some  days  for  the  relaxation  of  hi?  mind,  and  how  ingenious  he  was 
in  the  contrivance  of  those  diversions. 

\Ve  confess  that  we  are  unable  to  agree  with  the  grave 
conclusion  of  the  author  from  whom  we  quote.  To  us  this 
"  ingenious  diversion  "  seems  about  as  sorry  a  jest  as  we 
ever  heard  of.  However,  it  was  considered  "most  admi- 
rable fooling  "  in  Moscow,  and,  at  all  events,  after  two  or 
three  repetitions,  seems  to  have  quite  cured  the  people  of 
their  desire  for  Patriarchs. 

"The  Czar,"  says  Voltaire,  "thus  laughingly  avenged 
twenty  Emperors  of  Germany,  ten  Kings  of  France,  and  a 
host  of  sovereigns.  This  was  all  the  fruit  which  the  Sor- 


I92 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


bonne  gathered  from  their  not  very  politic  idea  of  reuniting 
the  Greek  and  Latin  Churches." 

The  darkest  chapter  in  the  life  of  Peter  now  approaches. 
After  the  lapse  of  a  century,  no  one  can  read  the  account 
of  that  dreadful  tragedy,  the  trial,  condemnation,  and 
death  of  the  Czarevitch  Alexis,  without  a  shudder  of  hor- 
ror. No  one  can  contemplate  the  spectacle  of  a  son  judi- 
cially condemned  by  his  father  for  no  crime — no  one  can 
read  the  record  of  the  solemn  farce  which  represents  the 
trial  of  the  unfortunate  victim  without  feeling  all  his  admira- 
tion for  the  extraordinary  qualities  of  the  Czar  swallowed 
up  by  indignation  and  abhorrence.  Up  to  this  time  Peter 
seems  a  man — a  hard-hearted,  despotic,  inexorable  man, 
perhaps — but  he  is  still  human.  He  now  seems  only  a 
machine,  a  huge  engine  of  unparalleled  power,  placed  upon 
the  earth  to  effect  a  certain  task,  working  its  mighty  arms 
night  and  day  with  ceaseless  and  untiring  energy,  crashing 
through  all  obstacles,  and  annihilating  everything  in  its  path 
with  the  unfeeling  precision  of  gigantic  mechanism. 

It  was  hardly  to  be  expected,  to  be  sure,  that  this  tre- 
mendous despot,  who  had  recoiled  before  no  obstacle  in  the 
path  of  his  settled  purpose,  who  had  strode  over  everything 
with  the  step  of  a  giant,  who  had  given  two  seas  to  an 
inland  empire,  who  had  conquered  the  most  warlike  nation 
and  sovereign  of  Europe  with  barbarians  in  petticoats,  who 
had  crushed  the  nobility,  annihilated  the  Janizaries,  tram- 
pled the  Patriarch  in  the  dust — who  had  repudiated  his 
wife  because  she  was  attached  to  the  old  customs  of  Mus- 
covy, and  had  married  and  crowned  a  pastry-cook's  mis- 
tress because  it  was  his  sovereign  will  and  pleasure — it  was 
hardly  to  be  expected  that  such  a  man  would  hesitate 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  I93 

about  disinheriting  his  own  son  if  he  thought  proper  to  do 
so.  But  it  might  have  been  hoped  that  he  would  content 
himself  with  disinheriting  him,  and  that  the  "  Pater  Patrise," 
as  by  solemn  decree  he  was  shortly  afterward  entitled,  would 
remember  that  he- was  also  father  of  Alexis. 

This  unhappy  young  man,  the  son  of  the  repudiated 
wife  of  the  Czar,  seems  to  have  been  a  very  miserable  crea- 
ture. We  have  the  fullest  sympathy  with  the  natural  disap- 
pointment of  Peter  at  the  incorrigible,  hopeless  stupidity 
and  profligacy  of  his  son.  Still,  he  had  himself  to  blame 
in  a  great  measure  for  many  of  his  son's  defects.  His  edu- 
cation had  been  neglected,  or  rather,  worse  than  neglected ; 
it  had  been  left  to  the  care  of  monks,  to  the  care  of  the 
very  order  of  people  most  wedded  to  the  ancient  state  of 
things,  and  most  desirous  of  restoring  it  if  possible.  The 
necessary  result  of  such  training  upon  a  dull  boy  might 
easily  have  been  foreseen.  There  was,  however,  not  the 
slightest  objection  to  disinheriting  him ;  he  had  no  claim  to 
the  throne,  and  he  was  totally  unworthy  of  it.  There  was 
no  law  of  Russia  designating  the  eldest  son  as  successor. 
On  the  contrary,  the  genius  of  the  Russian  autocracy  seems 
to  vest  the  fee  simple  of  all  the  Russias  and  all  the  Russians 
in  the  actual  autocrat,  to  be  disposed  of  as  he  sees  fit,  and 
devised  to  whomsoever  he  deems  most  eligible.  This  had 
been,  and  was  then,  the  law,  if  it  be  worth  while  to  talk 
about  law  when  the  will  of  the  sovereign  makes  and  alters 
the  law  at  any  moment.  Alexis  seems  to  have  been  weak, 
dissolute,  and  intriguing — a  sot,  a  bigot,  a  liar,  and  a  cow- 
ard— the  tool  of  "  bushy-bearded  *'  priests  and  designing 
women,  whose  control  of  the  empire  had  been  terminated 
by  Peter's  energetic  measures.  The  Czar's  predominating 
13 


194 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


fear  was  that  at  his  death  the  empire  would  relapse  into  the 
quagmire  of  barbarism  from  which  he  had  reclaimed  it. 
Alexis,  priest-ridden  and  ignorant,  was  sure  to  become  a 
tool  in  the  hands  of  priests  as  soon  as  he  should  ascend  the 
throne,  and  the  old  order  of  things  would  as  surely  be  rein- 
stated. 

Peter,  soon  after  the  death  of  his  son's  wife  (a  virtuous 
and  intelligent  German  princess,  whose  life  seems  to  have 
been  worn  out  by  the  neglect,  cruelty,  and  debauchery  of 
her  husband),  remonstrates  with  him  upon  his  «vil  courses, 
commands  him  to  reform,  and  threatens  else  to  disinherit 
him.  "  Amend  your  life,  or  else  turn  monk,"  says  the  Czar. 
"I  intend  to  embrace  the  monastic  life,"  replies  the  son; 
"  I  pledge  myself  to  do  so,  and  only  ask  your  gracious  per- 
mission." The  Czar,  just  before  his  departure  for  Germany 
and  France,  visits  Alexis,  who  was,  or  pretended  to  be,  con- 
fined to  his  bed  by  sickness.  The  young  man  again  renews 
his  renunciation  of  the  succession  and  repeats  his  pledge  to 
become  a  monk.  Peter  bids  him  take  six  months  to  con- 
sider the  matter,  takes  an  affectionate  farewell  of  him,  and 
sets  out  upon  his  travels.  As  soon  as  his  back  is  turned, 
Alexis  realizes  the  old  distich : 

"  The  devil  was  sick,  the  devil  a  monk  would  be ; 
The  devil  got  well,  the  devil  a  monk  was  he." 

He  recovers  his  health  instantaneously,  and  celebrates  his 
father's  departure  by  getting  very  drunk  with  a  select  party 
of  friends.  Seven  months  afterward  the  Czar  writes  to 
him  to  join  him  at  Copenhagen,  if  he  had  determined  to 
reform  his  life  and  make  himself  fit  for  the  succession ;  if 
not,  to  execute  his  monastic  plans  without  delay.  Alexis 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  195 

accordingly  announces  his  intention  of  going  to  Copenha- 
gen, draws  a  heavy  bill  on  Menshikoff  for  his  traveling  ex- 
penses, leaves  Moscow,  and,  instead  of  Copenhagen,  sneaks 
off  to  Vienna.  The  Emperor  of  Germany,  however,  turns 
him  off,  and  he  goes  to  Naples.  Two  envoys  of  the  Czar, 
Tolstoy  and  Romanzoff,  proceed  to  Naples  and  induce  him, 
by  ample  promises  of  forgiveness  on  the  part  of  his  father, 
to  return.  The  following  is  a  part  of  his  father's  letter : 

I  write  to  you  for  the  last  time,  to  tell  you  that  you  are  to  exe- 
cute my  will,  which  Tolstoy  and  Romanzoff  will  announce  to  you 
on  my  part.  If  you  obey  me,  I  assure  you  and  I  promise,  in  the 
name  of  God,  that  I  will  not  punish  you,  and  that,  if  you  return, 
I  will  love  you  more  than  ever ;  but  if  you  do  not,  I  give  you  as 
your  father,  in  virtue  of  the  power  which  I  have  received  from  God, 
my  eternal  curse ;  and  as  your  sovereign,  I  assure  you  that  I  shall 
find  the  means  of  punishing  you ;  in  which  I  hope  that  God  will 
assist  me,  and  that  he  will  take  my  just  cause  in  his  hand. 

Upon  the  faith  of  this  sacred  promise  Alexis  accompa- 
nies the  two  emissaries  to  Moscow,  where  they  arrive  on  the 
1 3th  of  February,  1718.  The  day  after  his  arrival,  the  Czar, 
by  way  of  keeping  his  promise  of  pardoning  and  loving  him 
more  than  ever,  calls  a  grand  council  of  the  Senate  and  all 
the  dignitaries  of  the  empire,  and  there,  in  the  most  solemn, 
formal,  and  authentic  manner,  disinherits  Alexis,  deprives 
him  of  all  claim  to  the  succession,  and  obliges  him,  and  all 
those  present,  to  take  the  oath  of  future  allegiance  to  his  and 
Catharine's  son  Peter,  then  an  infant,  who,  however,  shortly 
afterward  died.  This  was  the  beginning  of  the  fulfillment 
of  his  promise ;  but  it  was  only  the  beginning  of  the  end. 
Alexis  was  worthless,  ignorant,  stupid,  and  depraved ;  but 
he  had  committed  no  crime,  and  deserved  no  punishment, 


I96  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

certainly  not  the  punishment  of  death.  A  comfortable  state 
of  things  there  would  be  in  the  world,  if  every  man  who  hap- 
pened to  have  a  profligate  dunce  of  a  son  were  to  be  justified 
in  cutting  his  head  off;  and  for  an  autocrat  and  high  priest 
to  do  so  seems  to  us  a  thousand  times  more  atrocious. 

However,  the  Czar  seems  to  have  been  determined,  after 
his  first  evasion,  to  get  rid  of  him,  and  accordingly  produces 
the  charge  of  a  conspiracy.  Alexis  is  formally  accused  of 
conspiring  against  his  father's  life  and  throne,  and  a  pack  of 
perfectly  contemptible  stuff  is  collected  together  to  make 
what  was  called  evidence  ;  it  consisted  of  confessions  of  his 
mistress,  his  pot-companions,  and  his  confessor — all  upon 
the  rack — that  he  had  been  known  to  express  wishes  for 
his  father's  death,  and  to  throw  out  hints  about  receiving 
assistance,  in  a  certain  event,  from  the  Emperor  of  Germany. 
But  in  the  whole  mess  of  it  there  is  not  the  faintest  shadow 
of  a  shade  of  evidence  that  he  had  ever  conspired,  that  he 
had  ever  entertained  any  design  against  his  father ;  and  the 
necessary  result,  upon  any  candid  mind,  of  a  perusal  of  the 
evidence  is  a  conviction  of  his  perfect  innocence  of  the 
crime  charged  upon  him.  There  is  not  a  country  in  the 
world  where  there  is  any  pretense  of  administering  justice, 
in  which  such  an  accusation,  supported  by  such  evidence, 
would  not  have  been  hooted  out  of  court.  Still,  the  accu- 
sation was  made,  and  something  which  they  called  a  trial 
was  instituted.  The  Prince  is  sworn  upon  the  Holy  Evan- 
gelists to  tell  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth  ; 
and  he  immediately  begins  to  utter  lies  by  the  wholesale. 
His  weak  intellect  seems  to  have  been  possessed  and  dis- 
ordered by  one  idea — that  if  he  should  confess  a  great  deal 
more  than  was  expected,  and  make  himself  out  much  more 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


197 


guilty  than  he  was  supposed  to  be,  he  should  perhaps  obtain 
his  pardon.  Having,  however,  done  nothing  criminal,  and 
having  said  nothing  that  could  be  fairly  considered  suspicious, 
he  dives  into  the  bottom  of  his  breast,  and  brings  up  and 
displays  his  most  secret  thoughts  by  way  of  self-accusation. 
The  truth  seems  to  have  been  that  he  was  bullied  to  the  last 
degree.  We  know  the  Czar  to  have  been  a  man  who  emi- 
nently inspired  awe,  and  Alexis  was  of  an  uncommonly 
sneaking  disposition.  As  the  event  proved,  Peter  absolutely 
frightened  his  son  to  death.  Certainly,  never  were  the  forms 
of  judicial  investigation  so  outraged  as  in  this  trial.  The 
details  are  sickening,  and  we  have  already  transgressed  the 
indulgence  of  our  readers.  Let  one  or  two  questions,  made 
by  the  prosecution,  and  answered  by  the  criminal  in  writing, 
suffice  as  specimens  of  the  Czar's  criminal  jurisprudence  : 

"  When  you  saw,  in  the  letter  of  Beyer  "  (a  gossiping  en- 
voy from  the  German  Emperor's  court,  who  wrote  to  his 
sovereign  all  the  news,  true  or  false,  as  fast  as  he  picked  it 
up),  "  that  there  was  a  revolt  in  the  army  of  Mecklenburg, 
you  were  rejoiced ;  I  believe  that  you  had  some  view,  and 
that  you  would  have  declared  for  the  rebels,  even  in  my 
lifetime."  The  answer  of  Alexis  is,  "  If  the  rebels  had  called 
me  in  your  lifetime,  I  should  probably  have  joined  them, 
supposing  that  they  had  been  strong  enough."  In  answer  to 
another  question,  he  avows  that  "  he  had  accused  himself 
before  God,  in  confession  to  the  priest  Jacques,  of  having 
wished  the  death  of  his  father;  and  that  the  confessor 
Jacques  had  replied :  '  God  will  pardon  you  for  it ;  we  all 
wish  it  as  much.'  " 

After  this  farce  of  a  trial  had  been  enacted,  the  Czar, 
waiving  his  prerogative  of  life  and  death,  determined  to  sub- 


198 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


mit  the  case  to  the  judgment  of  the  clergy,  judges,  and  high 
officers  of  state.  This  always  seemed  to  us  very  paltry.  It 
was  an  attempt  to  shift  the  responsibility  of  the  murder  off 
his  own  shoulders,  where  only  it  belonged.  The  council  of 
clergy,  after  recognizing  the  Czar's  power— /#.$•  vita  et  necis — 
which  nobody  ever  doubted,  and  citing  several  cases  from 
the  Old  Testament,  recommended  mercy,  relying  principally 
upon  Absalom's  case.  It  was  plain  they  washed  their  hands 
of  it.  Meantime,  further  investigations,  it  was  pretended, 
had  made  the  matter  worse ;  and,  on  the  5th  of  July,  the 
ministers,  senators,  and  generals  unanimously  condemn  the 
Prince  to  death,  leaving  the  sentence,  of  course,  open  to  the 
Czar's  revision,  and  prescribing  no  particular  mode  of  exe- 
cution. The  sentence  of  death  is  published,  Alexis  is  in- 
formed of  it,  and  seems  literally  to  have  been  frightened  to 
death  by  it ;  for,  while  the  Czar  was  deliberating  what  course 
to  take  (and  the  opinion  of  the  most  indulgent — we  confess 
not  ours — seems  to  be  that  he  did  not  intend  the  execution 
of  the  sentence),  the  unfortunate  young  man  was  carried  off 
by  a  kind  of  apoplectic  seizure,  and,  on  the  7th  of  July,  died 
contrite,  receiving  the  sacrament  and  extreme  unction,  and 
imploring  his  father's  pardon. 

This  account  seems  to  be  now  accepted  as  the  true  one. 
But  the  Marquis  de  Custine,  in  his  greediness  to  devour 
everything  that  blackens  the  character  of  Russia  in  general, 
and  of  Peter  the  Great  in  particular,  could  not,  of  course, 
fail  to  reproduce  the  stories  that  have  been  told  and  retold, 
exploded  and  reexploded — and  which  will  continue,  we  sup- 
pose, to  be  told  and  exploded,  believed  in  and  ridiculed,  to 
the  end  of  time.  It  was  not  believed  by  many  people  in 
Europe  at  the  time,  and  it  is  not  believed  by  the  Comte  de 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


199 


Se"gur  and  the  Marquis  de  Custine  now,  that  the  Prince  died 
a  natural  death — if  the  cataleptic  convulsive  fit,  consequent 
upon  extreme  and  protracted  mental  agony,  which  finally 
ended  his  life,  can  be  called  a  natural  and  not  a  violent 
death.  All  sorts  of  stories  were  told  at  the  time,  each  more 
incredible  than  the  other,  and  each  disproving  the  other. 
The  Czar  was  said  to  have  knouted  him  to  death  with  his 
own  hands — to  have  poisoned  him  with  a  potion  which  he 
sent  Marshal  Weyde  to  an  apothecary's  shop  in  broad  day- 
light to  procure — to  have  cut  off  his  head,  and  then  to  have 
had  it  privately  sewed  on  again  by  Madame  Cramer — in 
short,  to  have  made  away  with  him  by  a  variety  of  means,  all 
of  which  could  not  well  have  been  true,  and  all  of  which 
are,  under  the  circumstances,  extremely  unlikely.  To  us  it 
seems  ridiculous  to  add  a  new  horror  to  this  terrible  tragedy. 
We  are  not  sure,  either,  that  the  supposed  assassination 
makes  the  matter  any  worse.  "  Murder  most  foul  as  at  the 
best  it  is,"  we  are  unable  to  see  that  the  private  murder  is  a 
whit  more  atrocious  than  the  public,  solemn,  and  judicial 
murder  of  which  the  Czar  stands  accused  and  condemned 
to  all  eternity. 

It  certainly  does  not  seem  to  have  been  in  Peter's  nature 
to  have  taken  his  son  off  by  poison,  or  in  any  private  way. 
The  autocrat  was  a  man  who  gloried  in  his  own  actions,  in 
displaying  the  tremendous,  irresistible  power  of  his  own  will. 
He  had  collected  all  the  dignity  of  his  empire  to  assist  at 
the  spectacle ;  he  had  invoked  the  attention  of  all  Europe 
to  the  tragedy  he  proposed  to  enact ;  he  had  determined  to 
execute  his  son,  and  he  did  intend,  we  have  no  doubt,  to 
murder  him  in  the  most  ceremonious  manner,  and  for  the 
good  of  his  country.  We  have  not  a  doubt  of  his  motives ; 


200  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

he  thought  himself  actuated  by  the  purest  philanthropy; 
but  these  expansive  bosoms,  which  embrace  the  whole  earth, 
or  a  third  of  it,  in  their  colossal  affection,  are  apt  to  be  de- 
ficient in  the  humbler  virtues  of  love  and  charity  when  it 
comes  to  detail.  The  truth  was,  Peter  loved  his  country  so 
well  that  he  determined  to  sacrifice  his  son  to  its  welfare ; 
in  other  words,  his  heart  was  as  hard  as  the  nether  millstone, 
and  he  would  have  sacrificed  twenty  thousand  sons  rather 
than  have  been  thwarted  in  the  cherished  projects  of  his 
ambitious  intellect.  But  we  confess  we  can  conceive  of  no 
motive  for  the  alleged  assassination.  It  was  not  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  Emperor,  and  it  was  a  piece  of  stupidity  as  well 
as  barbarity.  "  If  the  assassination  had  trammeled  up  the 
consequence  "  of  all  that  preceded,  "  then  it  were  well " ; 
and  the  deed  might  have  been  possible.  But  the  broken 
faith  to  his  son,  the  atrocious  trial,  the  deliberate  condem- 
nation, could  in  no  manner  have  been  obliterated  from  the 
minds  of  men  by  the  "  deep  damnation  "  of  a  secret  "  taking 
off."  He  had  announced  to  the  world  his  intention  of  exe- 
cuting his  son  for  alleged  disobedience  and  conspiracy ;  he 
had  sent  to  every  court  in  Europe  copies  of  the  judicial  pro- 
ceedings, ending  in  the  condemnation  of  the  victim  ;  he  had 
been  publicly  brandishing  the  sword  of  justice  over  his  son's 
neck,  and  calling  upon  the  world  to  witness  the  spectacle ; 
and  why  he  should  have  made  all  this  parade  for  the  mere 
purpose  of  poisoning  him,  knouting  him,  or  cutting  his  head 
off  in  secret,  seems  inexplicable. 

Besides,  as  Voltaire  very  strongly  urges,  the  different 
kinds  of  assassination  alleged  disprove  each  other,  and  the 
fact  that  Alexis  was  never  alone  from  the  moment  of  the 
condemnation  to  the  hour  of  his  death  makes  any  secret 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  201 

execution  impossible.  The  knouting  story  has  not  found 
many  advocates ;  the  poisoning  and  the  beheading  are  sup- 
ported about  equally,  and  are  both  about  equally  probable. 
It  certainly  was  not  probable  that  the  Czar  would  have  sent 
a  high  officer  of  court  to  fetch  the  poison,  and  a  few  minutes 
afterward  have  dispatched  another  messenger  to  bid  the 
first  make  great  haste.  This  is  not  exactly  the  way  in  which 
poisoning  is  usually  managed.  And  the  other  story,  that 
the  young  man's  head  was  cut  off  and  then  sewed  on  again, 
is  so  ludicrous  that  it  would  deserve  no  attention  but  for 
the  number  of  writers  who  have  reported  it  upon  the  au- 
thority of  contemporaneous  gossip.  At  what  moment  the 
Czar  found  a  secret  opportunity  to  cut  the  head  off — how 
Madam  Cramer  found  a  secret  opportunity  to  sew  it  on 
again — how  this  ingenious  lady,  who,  we  suppose,  had  not 
practiced  this  kind  of  needlework  as  a  profession,  was  able 
to  fit  it  on  so  adroitly  as  to  deceive  not  only  the  whole 
court  but  even  the  patient  himself,  for,  as  far  as  we  can  un- 
derstand the  story,  Alexis  seems  to  have  received  extreme 
unction  and  the  sacrament,  in  presence  of  about  a  hundred 
witnesses,  after  Mrs.  Cramer's  job  was  finished — are  all 
matters  very  difficult  to  explain.  Moreover,  as  we  have, 
already  observed,  we  do  not  see  much  greater  atrocity  in 
the  one  case  than  in  the  other.  Peter's  will  being  the  only 
law  of  the  land,  he  could  do  what  he  chose,  execute  his  son 
as  he  chose,  and  by  his  own  hand  if  he  chose.  The  only 
law  which  could  have  any  binding  force  over  the  autocrat 
was  the  law  of  nature,  and  that,  to  his  soul  of  granite,  was 
weaker  than  the  spider's  web.  He  was  determined  to  sacri- 
fice his  son  to  the  welfare  of  his  country,  and  to  insure  the 
continuance  of  his  reformation  in  church  and  state.  Sacri- 


202  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

fices  of  this  sort  have  always  found  advocates  and  admirers, 
and  are  sure  to  be  repeated  on  great  occasions,  and  at  rare 
intervals,  to  the  end  of  time. 

Dismissing  this  painful  subject,  we  hasten  to  conclude 
this  imperfect  sketch  of  the  principal  events  in  the  Czar's 
history.  We  will  not  dwell  upon  the  extraordinary  but 
abortive  intrigues  of  the  two  arch-plotters  of  Europe,  Car- 
dinal Alberoni  and  Baron  Gortz,  by  which  the  Czar  and 
the  Swedish  monarch  were  to  be  reconciled  and  combined 
in  a  plot  against  George  I.  of  England,  and  in  favor  of  the 
Pretender.  A  chance  bullet  from  "  a  petty  fortress  and  a 
dubious  hand  "  at  Frederikshald,  in  Norway,  terminates  at 
once  the  life  of  Charles  and  the  intrigues  of  Gortz.  The 
Baron,  instead  of  taking  the  crown  from  George's  head, 
loses  his  own  head  at  Stockholm ;  Alberoni  is  turned  out  of 
Spain ;  and  the  Czar  remains  in  statu  quo,  having  been  care- 
ful throughout  the  whole  intrigue,  which  was  perfectly  well 
known  in  England,  to  make  the  most  barefaced  promises  of 
eternal  friendship  to  the  house  of  Hanover ;  and  "  to  reit- 
erate," as  the  diplomatists  say,  "  the  assurances  of  his  dis- 
tinguished consideration  "  for  the  English  King  all  the  time 
that  he  was  plotting  against  his  throne. 

The  death  of  Charles  alters  the  complexion  of  Europe. 
Peace,  which  was  hardly  possible  during  his  lifetime,  be- 
comes the  immediate  object  of  all  parties.  The  Prince  of 
Hesse,  husband  of  Queen  Ulrica,  and,  by  cession  of  his 
wife,  King  of  Sweden,  is  desirous  of  peace  upon  almost  any 
terms  which  will  allow  of  an  honorable  repose  to  his  ex- 
hausted and  impoverished  country.  Peter,  having  obtained 
possession  of  all  the  provinces  he  required,  is  ready  to 
sheathe  the  sword  on  receiving  proper  recognition  of  his 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  203 

title  to  the  property  thus  acquired ;  and  accordingly,  after 
a  good  deal  of  bravado  upon  the  Baltic  between  the  English 
and  Russian  fleets,  and  the  burning  of  some  fifty  or  sixty 
Swedish  villages,  innumerable  chateaux,  and  fifteen  or  twen- 
ty thousand  houses,  in  a  descent  made  by  the  Russians 
upon  the  coasts  of  Sweden,  the  war,  which  continues  with 
ferocity  during  all  the  negotiations  for  peace,  is  at  last 
brought  to  a  conclusion  by  the  signing  of  the  treaty  of  Neu- 
stadt,  on  September  10,  1721.  By  this  treaty  of  peace,  the 
Czar  is  guaranteed  in  the  possession  of  Livonia,  Esthonia, 
Ingria,  Carelia,  Viborg,  and  the  many  adjacent  islands,  and 
thus  reaps  the  reward  of  twenty  years'  hard  labor ;  receiv- 
ing, moreover,  from  the  Senate  and  Synod,  by  solemn  de- 
cree— what  seems  insipid  homage  for  an  autocrat — the  titles 
of  Great,  Emperor,  and  Pater  Patrice. 

After  an  interval  of  two  years,  passed  in  establishing 
woolen,  paper,  and  glass  manufactories,  embellishing  his 
capital,  and  regulating  the  internal  and  foreign  commerce 
of  Russia,  we  suddenly  find  him,  accompanied  by  the  faith- 
ful Catharine,  descending  the  Volga  at  the  head  of  a  large 
army.  A  revolution  which  had  broken  out  in  Persia,  in  the 
course  of  which  the  reigning  sovereign,  the  imbecile  Hus- 
sein, finds  himself  hard  pressed  by  the  Afghan  prince,  Meer 
Mahmoud,  offers  an  opportunity  to  Peter  to  possess  himself 
of  a  few  maritime  provinces  on  the  Caspian,  to  console  him 
for  the  loss  of  Azov  consequent  upon  the  disaster  of  the 
Pruth.  A  few  hundred  Russians,  engaged  in  commerce  at 
the  town  of  Shamakia,  having  been  cut  to  pieces  during 
some  of  the  hostile  movements,  he  finds  therein  a  pretext 
for  invading  Persia,  and  requiring  satisfaction  from  both 
sovereign  and  rebel.  Failing  in  this,  of  course,  he  sails 


204 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


from  Astrakhan  to  Derbent,  which  town  he  takes  possession 
of,  and,  soon  afterward,  being  applied  to  by  the  unhappy 
Sophi  for  protection  against  the  Afghans,  he  consents  to 
afford  it,  in  consideration  of  receiving  the  towns  of  Baku 
and  Derbent,  together  with  the  provinces  of  Ghilan,  Mazan- 
deran,  and  Astrabad.  "  It  is  not  land  I  want,  but  water," 
exclaims  the  Czar,  as  he  snatches  these  sunny  provinces,  the 
whole  southern  coast  of  the  Caspian,  the  original  kingdom 
of  Cyrus,  from  the  languid  hand  of  the  Persian,  without  the 
expenditure  of  the  blood,  time,  and  treasure  which  it  had 
cost  him  to  wrest  the  frozen  swamps  of  Finland  from  the 
iron  grasp  of  Charles. 

Peter's  conquests  are  now  concluded.  The  Russian 
colossus  now  stands  astride,  from  the  "  thrilling  regions  of 
thick-ribbed  ice  "  on  the  Baltic  to  the  "  fragrant  bowers  of 
Astrabad "  on  the  Caspian,  with  a  foot  upon  either  sea. 
The  man  who  had  begun  to  gratify  his  passion  for  maritime 
affairs  by  paddling  a  little  skiff  on  the  Yausa,  and  who  be- 
came on  his  accession  only  the  barbaric  sovereign  of  an  in- 
land and  unknown  country,  now  finds  himself  the  lord  of 
two  seas,  with  a  considerable  navy,  built  almost  by  his  own 
hand.  It  was  upon  his  return  to  Petersburg  from  his  Per- 
sian expedition,  that  he  ordered  the  very  skiff  in  which  he 
commenced  navigation  to  be  brought  from  Moscow,  and 
took  occasion  to  give  to  his  court  an  entertainment  which 
was  called  the  "  consecration  of  the  Little  Grandsire,"  that 
being  the  name  he  had  given  to  the  skiff.  At  the  time 
of  this  ceremony  of  the  consecration,  the  progeny  of  the 
Little  Grandsire  numbered  already,  according  to  the  re- 
turns of  the  admiralty,  "  forty-one  ships  of  the  line,  in  a 
condition  for  service  at  sea,  carrying  twenty  -  one  hun- 


PETER    THE  GREAT. 


205 


dred  and  six  guns,  manned  with  fourteen  thousand  nine 
hundred  seamen,  besides  a  proportionate  number  of  frigates, 
galleys,  and  other  smaller  craft."  The  little  cabin  which 
was  Peter's  house  while  building  Petersburg,  still  stands 
upon  what  is  now  called  the  Citadel ;  it  is  consecrated  as  a 
chapel,  filled  with  votive  offerings,  and  inclosed  with  a  brick 
wall,  and  the  Little  Grandsire  is  religiously  preserved  within 
the  building. 

We  are  certainly  not  taken  in  by  the  colossal  puerility 
of  the  Russian  marine  any  more  than  the  Marquis  de  Cus- 
tine  is  ;  and,  although  the  descendants  of  the  Little  Grand- 
sire  are  now  at  least  double  the  number  they  were  at  the 
time  of  the  consecration,  we  have  not  heard  of  any  very 
brilliant  exploits  on  any  ocean  to  justify  the  very  imposing 
and  very  Roman  rostra  which  decorate  the  exchange  at 
Petersburg.  To  use  a  vulgar  but  expressive  phrase,  the 
Russian  navy  has  not  yet  set  the  Baltic  on  fire,  and  we 
doubt  if  it  ever  will.  If  it  could  thaw  a  little,  it  would  be 
all  the  better ;  for,  Cronstadt  being  blockaded  by  ice  six 
months  in  the  year,  the  navy  is  only  paraded  during  the 
pleasant  weather  for  the  amusement  of  the  autocrat.  As 
long  as  England  stands  where  it  does,  and  the  Russian  win- 
ter remains  as  it  is,  we  shall  hardly  fear  much  from  the  de- 
scendants of  the  Little  Grandsire,  at  least  till  the  capital  is 
shifted  to  the  Bosporus. 

At  the  same  time  we  are  far  from  agreeing  with  the  Mar- 
quis de  Custine  in  his  sweeping  condemnation  of  Peter's 
policy  in,  building  Petersburg  and  establishing  a  marine. 
It  was  a  thousand  times  better  to  have  the  Black  Sea  and 
the  Baltic  than  nothing;  and  if  his  successors  had  taken 
half  as  much  pains  as  himself  in  fostering  the  maritime 


206  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

trade  of  the  country,  and  if  Russia,  instead  of  all  this 
parade  of  ships  of  the  line,  frigates,  and  steamers,  could 
create  a  mercantile  marine  for  itself,  and  could  manage  its 
own  considerable  foreign  trade,  now  monopolized  by  for- 
eign vessels,  principally  the  English,  she  might  still  obtain 
the  germ  of  a  maritime  population  while  waiting  for  Con- 
stantinople. But  till  she  learns  that  the  strength  of  a  navy 
consists  in  sailors  and  not  ships  she  is  not  likely  to  be  a  very 
formidable  power  upon  the  ocean,  let  her  build  as  many 
line-of-battle  ships  as  she  chooses. 

The  only  other  interesting  incident  in  Peter's  life,  which 
now  draws  rapidly  to  its  close,  was  the  coronation  of  Catha- 
rine as  Empress  consort.  This  event  was  celebrated  with 
extraordinary  pomp,  and  particular  stress  is  laid  in  the  Em- 
peror's proclamation  upon  her  conduct  in  the  affair  of  the 
Pruth,  and  the  salvation  of  himself  and  his  army  is  attrib- 
uted to  her  heroism  and  presence  of  mind.  There  seems 
to  be  little  doubt  that  Peter  intended  this  solemn  coro- 
nation of  the  Empress  during  his  lifetime — a  ceremony 
which  was  not  usual  in  Russia — to  be  an  indication  of  his 
intention  that  she  should  succeed  to  the  throne  upon  his 
death. 

Very  soon  after  this,  having  exposed  himself  when  in  a 
feeble  state  of  health  by  standing  in  the  water  a  long  time 
and  over-exerting  himself  in  saving  the  lives  of  some  sailors 
and  soldiers  who  were  near  being  wrecked  in  a  storm  upon 
the  Gulf  of  Finland,  he  was  attacked  by  a  painful  disorder, 
to  which  he  had  been  subject  during  the  latter  years  of  his 
life,  and  expired  with  calmness  and  resignation  on  the  28th 
of  January,  1725.  His  sufferings  during  his  last  illness  had 
been  so  intense  that  he  was  unable  to  make  any  intelli- 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  207 

gible  disposition  as  to  the  succession ;  and,  strange  to  say, 
the  possessor  of  this  mighty  empire,  of  which  the  only  fun- 
damental law  was  the  expressed  will  of  the  sovereign,  died 
intestate.  It  is  in  the  highest  degree  probable  that  he  had 
intended  to  appoint  his  wife  as  his  successor ;  at  any  rate, 
assisted  by  the  promptness  of  Menshikoff  and  her  own  reso- 
lution, Catharine  ascended  the  throne  without  opposition. 

The  disorder  which  thus  cut  off  the  Czar  in  the  fifty- 
fourth  year  of  his  age  was  an  acute  inflammation  of  the  in- 
testines and  bladder ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  course,  his  death 
was  attributed  to  poison.  We  do  not  observe  that  the  Mar- 
quis de  Custine  has  revived  this  story,  which  is  matter  of 
surprise  to  us,  particularly  as  we  believe  that  his  friend  the 
Comte  de  Segur  has  adopted  it  in  his  history.  The  tempta- 
tion to  damage  the  character  of  the  Empress,  and  to  repre- 
sent her  to  posterity  as  an  adulteress  and  a  poisoner,  was 
too  strong  to  be  resisted  by  the  contemporary  chroniclers. 
Lamberti  gives  us  a  detailed  account  of  an  intrigue  of 
Catharine  with  one  of  her  chamberlains,  a  melodramatic 
discovery  made  by  Peter  in  an  arbor,  and  a  consequent  de- 
termination upon  his  part  to  shut  her  up  for  life  in  a  con- 
vent. She  escaped  her  fate,  according  to  the  same  faithful 
historian,  in  a  singular  manner.  Peter,  it  appears,  kept  a 
memorandum-book,  and  was  in  the  habit  of  making  daily 
minutes  of  everything  he  proposed  to  do;  while  one  of 
Catharine's  pages  was  in  the  habit  of  secretly  bringing  his 
Majesty's  tablets  from  his  dressing-room  for  the  daily  in- 
spection of  the  Empress.  The  intended  imprisonment  of 
Catharine,  jotted  down  among  other  memoranda,  was  thus 
revealed  to  her,  whereupon  she  incontinently  poisoned  him. 
This  story  has  been  sufficiently  disproved.  It  is  hardly 


208  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

worth  disproving ;  for  it  is  not  probable  that  a  man  who 
had  suddenly  made  this  discovery  of  the  guilt  of  a  woman 
who  had  just  been  crowned  as  empress,  and  whom  he  had 
now  determined  to  imprison  for  life,  instead  of  designating 
her  as  his  successor,  would  require  to  make  any  memoran- 
dum of  the  matter.  And  yet  we  are  expected  to  believe 
that  an  entry  was  found  upon  Peter's  tablets  almost  literally 
to  this  effect :  "  Mem.  To  repudiate  my  wife,  shave  her  head, 
and  lock  her  up  in  a  convent  " ;  as  if  otherwise  the  matter 
would  have  slipped  his  memory.  How  is  it  possible  that 
our  friend  De  Custine  has  allowed  this  story  to  escape  him  ? 

In  the  vast  square  of  the  Admiralty  at  St.  Petersburg 
stands  the  celebrated  colossal  statue  of  Peter  the  Great. 
Around  him  are  palaces,  academies,  arsenals,  gorgeous  tem- 
ples with  their  light  and  starry  cupolas  floating  up  like 
painted  balloons,  and  tall  spires  sheathed  in  gold,  and  flash- 
ing like  pillars  of  fire.  This  place,  which  is  large  enough 
for  half  the  Russian  army  to  encamp  in,  is  bounded  upon 
one  side  by  the  Admiralty  building,  the  Winter  Palace,  and 
the  Hermitage,  the  facades  of  the  three  extending  more 
than  a  mile ;  in  front  of  the  Winter  Palace  rises  the  red, 
polished  granite  column  of  Alexander,  the  largest  monolith 
in  the  world ;  from  the  side  opposite  the  palace  radiate 
three  great  streets  lined  with  stately  and  imposing  buildings, 
thronged  with  population,  and  intersected  by  canals  which 
are  all  bridged  with  iron;  across  the  square,  on  the  side 
opposite  the  statue,  stands  the  Isaac's  Church,  built  of  mar- 
ble, bronze,  granite,  and  gold,  and  standing  upon  a  subter- 
ranean forest,  more  than  a  million  large  trees  having  been 
driven  into  the  earth  to  form  its  foundation.  The  Emperor 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  2O9 

faces  the  Neva,  which  pours  its  limpid  waters  through  quays 
of  solid  granite,  which  for  twenty-five  miles  line  its  length 
and  that  of  its  branches ;  and  beyond  the  river  rise  in  full 
view  the  Bourse,  the  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  and 
other  imposing  public  edifices. 

This  equestrian  statue  has  been  much  admired;  we 
think  justly  so.  The  action  of  the  horse  is  uncommonly 
spirited  and  striking,  and  the  position  of  the  Emperor  digni- 
fied and  natural.  He  waves  his  hand,  as  if,  like  a  Scythian 
wizard  as  he  was,  he  had  just  caused  this  mighty,  swarming 
city,  with  all  its  palaces  and  temples,  to  rise  like  a  vapor 
from  the  frozen  morasses  of  the  Neva  with  one  stroke  of  his 
wand.  In  winter,  by  moonlight,  when  the  whole  scene  is 
lighted  by  the  still,  cold  radiance  of  a  polar  midnight,  we 
defy  any  one  to  pause  and  gaze  upon  that  statue  without  a 
vague  sensation  of  awe.  The  Czar  seems  to  be  still  pre- 
siding in  sculptured  silence  over  the  colossal  work  of  his 
hand ;  to  be  still  protecting  his  capital  from  the  inundations 
of  the  ocean,  and  his  empire  from  the  flood  of  barbarism, 
which  he  always  feared  would  sweep  over  it  upon  his  death. 

"  How  shall  we  rank  him  upon  glory's  page  ?  " 

It  is  impossible  not  to  admire  his  genius,  his  indomitable 
energy,  his  unconquerable  will.  He  proposed  to  himself, 
while  yet  a  youth,  the  mighty  task  of  civilizing  his  country, 
and  of  converting  a  mongrel  Asiatic  empire  into  a  powerful 
European  state.  It  is  difficult  to  place  one's  self  in  the 
right  position  to  judge  him  correctly.  We  are  very  far  from 
agreeing  with  the  Marquis  de  Custine,  that  his  mistake  was 
in  importing  his  civilization.  Russia  had  waited  in  vain 
quite  long  enough  for  the  spontaneous  and  indigenous  ger- 
14 

I 


210  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

mination  of  the  arts  and  sciences.  Besides,  in  these  days 
when  steam  is  so  rapidly  approximating  and  assimilating  the 
different  parts  of  the  earth  to  each  other,  when  railroads  are 
opened  to  the  Red  Sea,  and  steamers  paddle  by  the  Garden 
of  Eden,  it  is  difficult  to  say  what  nation  will  long  retain  a 
peculiar  and  appropriate  civilization  of  its  own.  That  the 
Czar  opened  the  door  to  Europe  and  the  ocean,  that  he 
erected  a  granite  portal,  a  triumphal  arch,  upon  his  western 
frontier,  is  to  us  his  greatest  merit.  If  Russia  is  to  be 
civilized,  it  must  be  through  the  influence  of  the  West ;  if 
Russia  is  to  be  free,  the  hymn  of  liberty  will  never  be  wafted 
to  her  ears  from  the  silent  deserts  of  Asia,  or  the  sepulchral 
stillness  of  China.  The  Emperor  did  right  to  descend  from 
his  Slavonic  throne,  and  to  go  abroad  to  light  the  torch  of 
civilization  in  more  favored  lands. 

But  while  we  admire  the  concentration  of  purpose  which 
sustained  him  throughout  his  labors,  we  can  not  help  deplor- 
ing the  great  and  fundamental  mistake  which  made  them  all 
comparatively  worthless.  A  despot  by  birth,  education,  and 
temperament,  he  had  never  the  most  glimmering  notion  of 
the  existence  of  a  people.  In  Russia,  then  and  at  this  day, 
there  is  not  even  the  fiction  of  a  people.  Peter  had  a  cor- 
rect idea  of  the  proper  sources  of  civilization  :  he  knew 
where  and  how  to  collect  the  seeds ;  but  he  forgot  that  there 
was  nobody  to  civilize.  A  people  may  be  humanized,  cul- 
tivated, brought  to  any  degree  of  perfection  in  arts,  and 
arms,  and  sciences ;  but  he  undertook  to  civilize  a  state  in 
which  there  was  but  one  man,  and  that  man  himself.  The 
root  must  grow  before  the  branches  and  the  foliage.  Of 
this  the  autocrat  had  no  idea.  He  had  already  annihilated 
the  only  class  which  was  not  composed  of  slaves.  With  one 


PETER    THE  GREAT.  211 

stroke  of  his  scepter  he  had  demolished  the  feudal  nobility, 
or  what  corresponded  in  a  degree  to  the  feudal  nobility  of 
Europe,  and  had  made  all  social  rank  throughout  his  empire 
to  depend  upon  service  to  himself.  What  was  accomplished 
at  a  later  day  in  western  Europe,  in  the  midst  of  long  convul- 
sions and  struggles,  by  the  upheaving  of  the  democracy,  was 
effected  by  the  autocrat  at  a  blow.  This  was  a  fatal  error. 
There  were  slaves  enough  before.  It  was  unnecessary  to 
degrade  the  nobles.  But,  the  more  closely  we  analyze  Peter's 
character,  the  more  cogently  we  are  compelled  to  conclude 
that  his  actuating  motive  was  rather  his  own  fame  than  the 
good  of  his  country.  A  great  peculiarity  of  his  ambition 
was  that,  though  possessed  of  eminent  military  talents  and 
highly  successful  in  his  campaigns,  he  seems  to  have  cared 
but  little  for  the  certaminis  gaudia  /  to  have  taken  but  small 
delight  in  battles  and  victories  for  themselves ;  to  have 
cared  little  for  conquest,  beyond  what  he  required  for  his 
settled  purpose.  Conquering,  he  never  aspires  to  be  a  con- 
queror; victorious  over  the  greatest  general  of  the  age,  he 
is  ready  to  sheathe  his  sword  as  soon  as  the  object  of  the 
contest  is  attained.  His  ambition  was  to  be  a  founder,  and 
he  never,  in  victory  or  defeat,  was  once  turned  aside  from 
his  purpose.  He  was  determined  to  advance  his  empire  to 
the  ocean,  to  create  a  new  capital,  and  to  implant  there  and 
throughout  his  empire  the  elements  of  European  civilization. 
If  his  ambition  had  flown  a  little  higher,  had  he  determined 
to  regenerate  his  people,  the  real  civilization  of  his  empire 
would  have  followed  sooner  than  it  is  now  likely  to  do.  Of 
this  he  probably  never  dreamed.  He  was  a  despot  through- 
out. He  might  have  found  other  matters  in  England  wor- 
thy of  his  attention,  other  institutions  as  intimately  con- 


212  PETER    THE  GREAT. 

nected  with  civilization  as  the  English  naval  architecture; 
but  he  appears  to  have  been  completely  indifferent  to  the 
great  spectacle  presented  to  an  autocrat  by  a  constitutional 
kingdom.  "  Are  these  all  lawyers  ?  "  said  he,  one  day,  when 
visiting  the  courts  at  Westminster.  "  What  can  be  the  use 
of  so  many  lawyers  ?  I  have  but  two  in  my  empire,  and  I 
mean  to  hang  one  of  them  as  soon  as  I  get  back."  He  cer- 
tainly might  as  well  have  hung  them  both ;  a  country  with- 
out law  has  very  little  need  of  lawyers. 

It  was  because  his  country  was  inhabited  by  slaves,  and 
not  by  a  people,  that  it  was  necessary,  in  every  branch  of 
his  great  undertaking,  to  go  into  such  infinitesimal  details. 
Our  admiration  of  the  man's  power  is,  to  be  sure,  increased 
by  a  contemplation  of  the  extraordinary  versatility  of  his 
genius,  its  wide  grasp,  and  its  minute  perception  ;  but  we  re- 
gret to  see  so  much  elephantine  labor  thrown  away.  As  he 
felt  himself  to  be  the  only  man  in  the  empire,  so  in  his  power 
of  labor  he  rises  to  a  demigod,  a  Hercules.  He  felt  that  he 
must  do  everything  himself,  and  he  did  everything.  He  fills 
every  military  post,  from  drummer  to  general,  from  cabin- 
boy  to  admiral ;  with  his  own  hand  he  builds  ships  of  the 
line,  and  navigates  them  himself  in  storm  and  battle ;  he 
superintends  every  manufactory,  every  academy,  every  hos- 
pital, every  prison ;  with  his  own  hand  he  pulls  teeth  and 
draws  up  commercial  treaties — wins  all  his  battles  with  his 
own  sword,  at  the  head  of  his  army,  and  sings  in  the  choir 
as  chief  bishop  and  head  of  his  church — models  all  his  forts, 
sounds  all  his  harbors,  draws  maps  of  his  own  dominions, 
all  with  his  own  hand — regulates  the  treasury  of  his  empire 
and  the  account-books  of  his  shopkeepers,  teaches  his  sub- 
jects how  to  behave  themselves  in  assemblies,  prescribes  the 


PETER   THE  GREAT. 


213 


length  of  their  coat-skirts,  and  dictates  their  religious  creed. 
If,  instead  of  contenting  himself  with  slaves  who  only  aped 
civilization,  he  had  striven  to  create  a  people  capable  and 
worthy  of  culture,  he  might  have  spared  himself  all  these  mi- 
nute details ;  he  would  have  produced  less  striking,  instan- 
taneous effects,  but  his  work  would  have  been  more  durable, 
and  his  fame  more  elevated.  His  was  one  of  the  monarch 
minds,  who  coin  their  age  and  stamp  it  with  their  image  and 
superscription  ;  but  his  glory  would  have  been  greater  if  he 
had  thought  less  of  himself,  and  more  of  the  real  interests  of 
his  country.  If  he  had  attempted  to  convert  his  subjects 
from  cattle  into  men,  he  need  not  have  been  so  eternally 
haunted  by  the  phantom  of  returning  barbarism,  destroying 
after  his  death  all  the  labor  of  his  lifetime,  and  which  he 
could  exorcise  only  by  shedding  the  blood  of  his  son. 
Viewed  from  this  position,  his  colossal  grandeur  dwindles. 
It  seems  to  us  that  he  might  have  been  so  much  more,  that 
his  possible  seem  to  dwarf  his  actual  achievements.  He 
might  have  been  the  creator  and  the  lawgiver  of  a  people. 
He  was,  after  all,  only  a  tyrant  and  a  city-builder.  Even 
now,  his  successors  avert  their  eyes  from  the  West.  The 
city  of  his  love  is  already  in  danger  from  more  potent  ele- 
ments than  water.  New  and  dangerous  ideas  fly  through 
that  magnificent  western  gateway.  When  the  portal  is  closed, 
the  keys  thrown  into  the  Baltic,  and  the  discarded  Moscow 
again  embraced,  how  much  fruit  will  be  left  from  the  foreign 
seeds  transplanted  ?  When  the  Byzantine  Empire  is  re- 
stored, perhaps  we  shall  see  their  ripened  development ;  the 
Russians  of  the  Lower  Empire  will  be  a  match  for  the  Greeks 
who  preceded  them. 

Still,  we  repeat,  it  is  difficult  to  judge  him  justly.     He 


2i4  PETER   THE  GREAT. 

seems  to  have  felt  a  certain  mission  confided  to  him  by  a 
superior  power.  His  object  he  accomplished  without  wa- 
vering, without  precipitation,  without  delay.  We  look  up  to 
him  as  to  a  giant,  as  we  see  him  striding  over  every  adver- 
sary, over  every  obstacle  in  his  path.  He  seems  in  advance 
of  his  country,  of  his  age,  of  himself.  In  his  exterior  he  is 
the  great  prince,  conqueror,  reformer;  in  his  interior,  the 
Muscovite,  the  barbarian.  He  was  conscious  of  it  himself. 
"  I  wish  to  reform  my  empire,"  he  exclaimed,  upon  one  oc- 
casion, "  and  I  can  not  reform  myself."  In  early  life  his  plea- 
sures were  of  the  grossest  character ;  he  was  a  hard  drinker, 
and  was  quarrelsome  in  his  cups.  He  kicked  and  cuffed  his 
ministers,  on  one  occasion  was  near  cutting  the  throat  of 
Lefort  in  a  paroxysm  of  drunken  anger,  and  was  habitually 
caning  Prince  Menshikoff.  But,  after  all,  he  did  reform 
himself,  and,  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  his  habits  were 
abstemious  and  simple,  and  his  days  and  nights  were  passed 
in  labors  for  his  country  and  his  fame. 

It  is  difficult  to  judge  him  justly.  Perhaps  it  would  have 
been  impossible  to  have  planted  even  the  germ  of  civil  or 
even  social  liberty  in  such  a  wilderness  as  Russia  was  at  his 
accession.  It  was  something  to  lift  her  ever  so  little  above 
the  waves  of  barbarism,  where  he  found  her  "  many  fathoms 
deep."  He  accomplished  a  great  deal.  He  made  Russia  a 
maritime  country,  gave  her  a  navy  and  a  commercial  capital, 
and  quadrupled  her  revenue ;  he  destroyed  the  Strelitzes, 
he  crushed  the  Patriarch,  he  abolished  the  monastic  institu- 
tions of  his  empire.  If  he  had  done  nothing  else,  he  would, 
for  these  great  achievements,  deserve  the  eternal  gratitude 
of  his  country. 


THE  NORTHMEN* 


WE  are  misers  in  knowledge  as  in  wealth.  Open  inex- 
haustible mines  to  us  on  every  hand,  yet  we  return  to  grope 
in  the  exhausted  stream  of  past  opulence,  and  sift  its  sands 
for  ore ;  place  us  in  an  age  when  history  pours  in  upon 
us  like  an  inundation,  and  the  events  of  a  century  are 
crowded  into  a  luster;  yet  we  tenaciously  hold  on  to  the 
scanty  records  of  foregone  times,  and  often  neglect  the  all- 
important  present  to  discuss  the  possibility  of  the  almost 
forgotten  past. 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  this  passion  for  the  antiquated 
and  the  obsolete  appears  to  be  felt  with  increasing  force  in 
this  country.  It  may  be  asked,  What  sympathies  can  the 
native  of  a  land  where  everything  is  in  its  youth  and  fresh- 
ness have  with  the  antiquities  of  the  ancient  hemisphere  ? 
What  inducement  can  he  have  to  turn  from  the  animated 
scene  around  him,  and  the  brilliant  perspective  that  breaks 
upon  his  imagination,  to  wander  among  the  moldering 
monuments  of  the  olden  world,  and  to  call  up  its  shadowy 
lines  of  kings  and  warriors  from  the  dim  twilight  of  tradi- 
tion ? 


*  History  of  the  Northmen,  or  Danes  and  Normans.      By  Henry 
Wheaton.     London.    8vo.     1831. 


2I6  THE  NORTHMEN. 

"  Why  seeks  he,  with  unwearied  toil, 

Through  death's  dark  walls  to  urge  his  way, 
Reclaim  his  long-asserted  spoil, 
And  lead  oblivion  into  day  ?  " 

We  answer  that  he  is  captivated  by  the  powerful  charm 
of  contrast.  Accustomed  to  a  land  where  everything  is 
bursting  into  life,  and  history  itself  but  in  its  dawning,  an- 
tiquity has,  in  fact,  for  him  the  effect  of  novelty ;  and  the 
fading  but  mellow  glories  of  the  past,  which  linger  in  the 
horizon  of  the  Old  World,  relieve  the  eye,  after  being  daz- 
zled with  the  rising  rays  which  sparkle  up  the  firmament  of 
the  New. 

It  is  a  mistake,  too,  that  the  political  faith  of  a  repub- 
lican requires  him  on  all  occasions  to  declaim  with  bigot 
heat  against  the  stately  and  traditional  ceremonials,  the 
storied  pomps  and  pageants  of  other  forms  of  government ; 
or  even  prevents  him  from  at  times  viewing  them  with  inter- 
est, as  matters  worthy  of  curious  investigation.  Indepen- 
dently of  the  themes  they  present  for  historical  and  philo- 
sophical inquiry,  he  may  regard  them  with  a  picturesque 
and  poetical  eye,  as  he  regards  the  Gothic  edifices  rich  with 
the  elaborate  ornaments  of  a  gorgeous  and  intricate  style 
of  architecture,  without  wishing  to  exchange  therefor  the 
stern  but  proud  simplicity  of  his  own  habitation ;  or,  as  he 
admires  the  romantic  keeps  and  castles  of  chivalrous  and 
feudal  times,  without  desiring  to  revive  the  dangerous  cus- 
toms and  warlike  days  in  which  they  originated.  To  him 
the  whole  pageantry  of  emperors  and  kings,  and  nobles  and 
titled  knights,  is,  as  it  were,  a  species  of  poetical  machinery, 
addressing  itself  to  his  imagination,  but  no  more  affecting 
his  faith  than  does  the  machinery  of  the  heathen  mythology 


THE  NORTHMEN.  2IJ 

affect  the  orthodoxy  of  the  scholar  who  delights  in  the 
strains  of  Homer  and  Virgil,  and  wanders  with  enthusiasm 
among  the  crumbling  temples  and  sculptured  deities  of 
Greece  and  Rome ;  or  do  the  fairy  mythology  of  the  East 
and  the  demonology  of  the  North  impair  the  Christian  faith 
of  the  poet  or  the  novelist  who  interweaves  them  in  his 
fictions. 

We  have  been  betrayed  into  these  remarks,  in  consider- 
ing the  work  before  us,  where  we  find  one  of  our  country- 
men, and  a  thorough  republican,  investigating  with  minute 
attention  some  of  the  most  antiquated  and  dubious  tracts 
of  European  history,  and  treating  of  some  of  its  exhausted 
and  almost  forgotten  dynasties ;  yet  .evincing  throughout 
the  enthusiasm  of  an  antiquarian,  the  liberality  of  a  scholar, 
and  the  enlightened  toleration  of  a  citizen  of  the  world. 

The  author  of  the  work  before  us,  Mr.  Henry  Wheaton, 
has  for  some  years  filled  the  situation  of  charge  d'affaires 
at  the  court  of  Denmark.  Since  he  has  resided  at  Copen- 
hagen, he  has  been  led  into  a  course  of  literary  and  historic 
research,  which  has  ended  in  the  production  of  the  present 
history  of  those  Gothic  and  Teutonic  people  who,  inhabit- 
ing the  northern  regions  of  Europe,  have  so  often  and  so 
successfully  made  inroads  into  other  countries  more  genial 
in  climate  and  abundant  in  wealth.  A  considerable  part  of 
his  book  consists  of  what  may  be  called  conjectural  or  criti- 
cal history,  relating  to  remote  and  obscure  periods  of  time 
previous  to  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  historiography, 
and  the  use  of  Roman  letters  among  those  northern  nations. 
At  the  outset,  therefore,  it  assumes  something  of  an  austere 
and  antiquarian  air,  which  may  daunt  and  discourage  that 
class  of  readers  who  are  accustomed  to  find  history  carefully 


2i8  THE  NORTHMEN. 

laid  out  in  easy,  rambling  walks  through  agreeable  land' 
scapes,  where  just  enough  of  the  original  roughness  is  left 
to  produce  the  picturesque  and  romantic.  Those,  however, 
who  have  the  courage  to  penetrate  the  dark  and  shadowy 
boundary  of  our  author's  work,  grimly  beset  with  hyperbo- 
rean horrors,  will  find  it  resembling  one  of  those  enchanted 
forests  described  in  northern  poetry — embosoming  regions 
of  wonder  and  delight  for  such  as  have  the  hardihood  to 
achieve  the  adventure.  For  our  own  part,  we  have  been 
struck  with  the  variety  of  adventurous  incidents  crowded 
into  these  pages,  and  with  the  abundance  of  that  poetical 
material  which  is  chiefly  found  in  early  history  ;  while  many 
of  the  rude  traditions  of  the  Normans,  the  Saxons,  and  the 
Danes  have  come  to  us  with  the  captivating  charms  of  early 
association,  recalling  the  marvelous  tales  and  legends  that 
have  delighted  us  in  childhood. 

The  first  seven  chapters  may  be  regarded  as  preliminary 
to  the  narrative,  or,  more  strictly,  historical  part  of  the 
book.  They  trace  the  scanty  knowledge  possessed  by  Greek 
and  Roman  antiquity  of  the  Scandinavian  north ;  the  earli- 
est migrations  from  that  quarter  to  the  west,  and  south,  and 
east  of  Europe;  the  discovery  of  Iceland  by  the  Norwe- 
gians; with  the  singular  circumstances  which  rendered  that 
barren  and  volcanic  isle,  where  ice  and  fire  contend  for 
mastery,  the  last  asylum  of  pagan  faith  and  Scandinavian 
literature.  In  this  wild  region  they  lingered  until  the  Latin 
alphabet  superseded  the  Runic  character,  when  the  tradi- 
tionary poetry  and  oral  history  of  the  north  were  consigned 
to  written  records,  and  rescued  from  that  indiscriminate  de- 
struction which  overwhelmed  them  on  the  Scandinavian 
continent. 


THE  NORTHMEN.  2ig 

The  government  of  Iceland  is  described  by  our  author 
as  being  more  properly  a  patriarchal  aristocracy  than  a  re- 
public ;  and  he  observes  that  the  Icelanders,  in  consequence 
of  their  adherence  to  their  ancient  religion,  cherished  and 
cultivated  the  language  and  literature  of  their  ancestors, 
and  brought  them  to  a  degree  of  beauty  and  perfection 
which  they  never  reached  in  the  Christianized  countries  of 
the  North,  where  the  introduction  of  the  learned  languages 
produced  feeble  and  awkward  though  classical  imitation, 
instead  of  graceful  and  national  originality. 

When,  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  century,  Christianity  was 
at  length  introduced  into  the  island,  the  national  literature, 
though  existing  only  in  oral  tradition,  was  full  blown,  and 
had  attained  too  strong  and  deep  a  root  in  the  affections  of 
the  people  to  be  eradicated,  and  had  given  a  charm  and 
value  to  the  language  with  which  it  was  identified.  The 
Latin  letters,  therefore,  which  accompanied  the  introduction 
of  the  Romish  religion,  were  merely  adapted  to  designate 
the  sounds  heretofore  expressed  by  Runic  characters,  and 
thus  contributed  to  preserve  in  Iceland  the  ancient  language 
of  the  North  when  exiled  from  its  parent  countries  of  Scan- 
dinavia. To  this  fidelity  to  its  ancient  tongue  the  rude  and 
inhospitable  shores  of  Iceland  owe  that  charm  which  gives 
them  an  inexhaustible  interest  in  the  eyes  of  the  antiquary, 
and  endears  them  to  the  imagination  of  the  poet.  "  The 
popular  superstitions,"  observes  our  author,  "with  which  the 
mythology  and  poetry  of  the  North  are  interwoven,  con- 
tinued still  to  linger  in  the  sequestered  glens  of  this  remote 
island." 

The  language  in  itself  appears  to  have  been  worthy  of 
this  preservation,  since  we  are  told  that  "it  bears  in  its 


220  THE  NORTHMEN. 

internal  structure  a  strong  resemblance  to  the  Latin  and 
Greek,  and  even  to  the  ancient  Persian  and  Sanskrit,  and 
rivals  in  copiousness,  flexibility,  and  energy  every  modern 
tongue." 

Before  the  introduction  of  letters  all  Scandinavian  knowl- 
edge was  perpetuated  in  oral  tradition  by  their  Skalds,  who, 
like  the  rhapsodists  of  ancient  Greece  and  the  bards  of  the 
Celtic  tribes,  were  at  once  poets  and  historians.  We  boast 
of  the  encouragement  of  letters  and  literary  men  in  these 
days  of  refinement;  but  where  are  they  more  honored  and 
rewarded  than  they  were  among  these  barbarians  of  the 
North  ?  The  Skalds,  we  are  told,  were  the  companions  and 
chroniclers  of  kings,  who  entertained  them  in  their  trains, 
enriched  them  with  rewards,  and  sometimes  entered  the  lists 
with  them  in  trials  of  skill  in  their  art.  They  in  a  manner 
bound  country  to  country,  and  people  to  people,  by  a  de- 
lightful link  of  union,  traveling  about  as  wandering  min- 
strels from  land  to  land,  and  often  performing  the  office  of 
ambassadors  between  hostile  tribes.  While  thus  applying 
the  gifts  of  genius  to  their  divine  and  legitimate  ends,  by 
calming  the  passions  of  men  and  harmonizing  their  feelings 
into  kindly  sympathy,  they  were  looked  up  to  with  mingled 
reverence  and  affection,  and  a  sacred  character  was  attached 
to  their  calling.  Nay,  in  such  estimation  were  they  held 
that  they  occasionally  married  the  daughters  of  princes,  and 
one  of  them  was  actually  raised  to  a  throne  in  the  fourth 
century  of  the  Christian  era. 

It  is  true  the  Skalds  were  not  always  treated  with  equal 
deference,  but  were  sometimes  doomed  to  experience  the 
usual  caprice  that  attends  upon  royal  patronage.  We  are 
told  that  Canute  the  Great  retained  several  at  his  court, 


THE  NORTHMEN.  221 

who  were  munificently  rewarded  for  their  encomiastic  lays. 
One  of  them  having  composed  a  short  poem  in  praise  of 
his  sovereign,  hastened  to  recite  it  to  him,  but  found  him 
just  rising  from  table  and  surrounded  by  suitors : 

The  impatient  poet  craved  an  audience  of  the  King  for  his  lay, 
assuring  him  it  was  "  very  short."  The  wrath  of  Canute  was  kin- 
dled, and  he  answered  the  Skald  with  a  stern  look :  "  Are  you  not 
ashamed  to  do  what  none  but  yourself  has  dared — to  write  a  short 
poem  upon  me  ?  Unless  by  the  hour  of  dinner  to-morrow  you  pro- 
duce a  drapa  above  thirty  strophes  long  on  the  same  subject,  your 
life  shall  pay  the  penalty."  The  inventive  genius  of  the  poet  did 
not  desert  him  ;  he  produced  the  required  poem,  which  was  of  the 
kind  called  Tog-drapa,  and  the  King  liberally  rewarded  him  with 
fifty  marks  of  silver. 

Thus  we  perceive  how  the  flowers  of  poetry  sprung  up  and 
bloomed  amid  eternal  ice  and  snows.  The  arts  of  peace  were  suc- 
cessfully cultivated  by  the  free  and  independent  Icelanders.  Their 
Arctic  isle  was  not  warmed  by  a  Grecian  sun,  but  their  hearts 
glowed  with  the  fire  of  freedom.  The  natural  divisions  of  the 
country  by  icebergs  and  lava-streams  insulated  the  people  from  each 
other,  and  the  inhabitants  of  each  valley  and  each  hamlet  formed, 
as  it  were,  an  independent  community.  These  were  again  reunited 
in  the  general  national  assembly  of  the  Althing,  which  might  not 
be  unaptly  likened  to  the  Amphictyonic  Council  or  Olympic  games, 
where  all  the  tribes  of  the  nation  convened  to  offer  the  common 
rites  of  their  religion,  to  decide  their  mutual  differences,  and  to 
listen  to  the  lays  of  the  Skald,  which  commemorated  the  exploits  of 
their  ancestors.  Their  pastoral  life  was  diversified  by  the  occupa- 
tion of  fishing.  Like  the  Greeks,  too,  the  sea  was  their  element,  but 
even  their  shortest  voyages  bore  them  much  farther  from  their 
native  shores  than  the  boasted  expedition  of  the  Argonauts.  Their 
familiarity  with  the  perils  of  the  ocean,  and  with  the  diversified 
manners  and  customs  of  foreign  lands,  stamped  their  national  char- 


222  THE  NORTHMEN. 

acter  with  bold  and  original  features,  which  distinguished  them  from 
every  other  people. 

The  power  of  oral  tradition,  in  thus  transmitting,  through  a 
succession  of  ages,  poetical  or  prose  compositions  of  considerable 
length,  may  appear  almost  incredible  to  civilized  nations  accustomed 
to  the  art  of  writing.  But  it  is  well  known  that  even  after  the  Ho- 
meric poems  had  been  reduced  to  writing  the  rhapsodists  who  had 
been  accustomed  to  recite  them  could  readily  repeat  any  passage 
desired.  And  we  have,  in  our  own  times,  among  the  Servians,  Cal- 
mucks,  and  other  barbarous  and  semi-barbarous  nations,  examples 
of  heroic  and  popular  poems  of  great  length  thus  preserved  and 
handed  down  to  posterity.  This  is  more  especially  the  case  where 
there  is  a  perpetual  order  of  men,  whose  exclusive  employment  it  is 
to  learn  and  repeat,  whose  faculty  of  the  memory  is  thus  improved 
and  carried  to  the  highest  pitch  of  perfection,  and  who  are  relied 
upon  as  historiographers  to  preserve  the  national  annals.  The  in- 
teresting scene  presented  this  day  in  every  Icelandic  family,  in  the 
long  nights  of  winter,  is  a  living  proof  of  the  existence  of  this  an- 
cient custom.  No  sooner  does  the  day  close  than  the  whole  patri- 
archal family,  domestics  and  all,  are  seated  on  their  couches  in  the 
principal  apartment,  from  the  ceiling  of  which  the  reading  and 
working  lamp  is  suspended  ;  and  one  of  the  family,  selected  for  that 
purpose,  takes  his  seat  near  the  lamp,  and  begins  to  read  some  fa- 
vorite Saga,  or  it  may  be  the  works  of  Klopstock  and  Milton  (for 
these  have  been  translated  into  Icelandic),  while  all  the  rest  atten- 
tively listen,  and  are  at  the  same  time  engaged  in  their  respective 
occupations.  From  the  scarcity  of  printed  books  in  this  poor  and 
sequestered  country,  in  some  families  the  Sagas  are  recited  by  those 
who  have  committed  them  to  memory,  and  there  are  still  instances 
of  itinerant  orators  of  this  sort,  who  gain  a  livelihood  during  the 
winter  by  going  about  from  house  to  house  repeating  the  stories 
they  have  thus  learned  by  heart. 

The  most  prominent  feature  of  Icelandic  verse,  accord- 


THE  NORTHMEN.  223 

ing  to  our  author,  is  its  alliteration.  In  this  respect  it  re- 
sembles the  poetry  of  all  rude  periods  of  society.  That  of 
the  Eastern  nations,  the  Hebrews  and  the  Persians,  is  full  of 
this  ornament ;  and  it  is  found  even  among  the  classic  poets 
of  Greece  and  Rome.  These  observations  of  Mr.  Wheaton 
are  supported  by  those  of  Dr.  Henderson,*  who  states  that 
the  fundamental  rule  in  Icelandic  poetry  required  that  there 
should  be  three  words  in  every  couplet  having  the  same 
initial  letter,  two  of  which  should  be  in  the  former  hemistich, 
and  one  in  the  latter.  The  following  translation  from  Mil- 
ton is  furnished  as  a  specimen  : 

"  Fid  that  Fillu  diup 
Fard  annum  slaega, 
.tfdloerk  ^idleikat 
.Z?armi  vitis  a." 

"  Into  this  wild  abyss  the  wary  fiend 
Stood  on  the  brink  of  hell  and  looked 

As  a  specimen  of  the  tales  related  by  the  Skalds  we  may 
cite  that  of  Sigurd  and  the  beauteous  Brynhilda,  a  royal 
virgin,  who  is  described  as  living  in  a  lonely  castle,  encircled 
by  magic  flames. 

In  the  Teutonic  lay,  Brynhilda  is  a  mere  mortal  virgin  ; 
but  in  the  Icelandic  poem  she  becomes  a  Valkyria,  one  of 
those  demi-divinities,  servants  of  Odin  or  Woden  in  the 
Gothic  mythology,  who  were  appointed  to  watch  over  the 
fate  of  battle,  and  were,  as  their  name  betokens,  selectors  of 
the  slain.  They  were  clothed  in  armor,  and  mounted  on 
fleet  horses,  with  drawn  swords,  and  mingled  in  the  shock 


*  Henderson's  Iceland,  Edinburgh,  1819,  Appendix  III. 


224  THE  NORTHMEN. 

of  battle,  choosing  the  warrior  -  victims,  and  conducting 
them  to  Valhalla,  the  hall  of  Odin,  where  they  joined  the 
banquet  of  departed  heroes,  in  carousals  of  mead  and 
beer. 

The  first  interview  of  the  hero  and  heroine  is  wildly 
romantic.  Sigurd,  journeying  toward  Franconia,  sees  a 
flaming  light  upon  a  lofty  mountain :  he  approaches  it,  and 
beholds  a  warrior  in  full  armor  asleep  upon  the  ground.  On 
removing  the  helmet  of  the  slumberer,  he  discovers  the  sup- 
posed knight  to  be  an  Amazon.  Her  armor  clings  to  her 
body,  so  that  he  is  obliged  to  separate  it  with  his  sword. 
She  then  arises  from  her  death-like  sleep,  and  apprizes  him 
that  he  has  broken  the  spell  by  which  she  lay  entranced.  She 
had  been  thrown  into  this  lethargic  state  by  Odin,  in  pun- 
ishment for  having  disobeyed  his  orders.  In  a  combat  be- 
tween two  knights  she  had  caused  the  death  of  him  who 
should  have  had  the  victory. 

This  romantic  tale  has  been  agreeably  versified  by  Wil- 
liam Spencer,  an  elegant  and  accomplished  genius,  who  has 
just  furnished  the  world  with  sufficient  proofs  of  his  talents 
to  cause  regret  that  they  did  not  fall  to  the  lot  of  a  more  in- 
dustrious man.  .We  subjoin  the  fragments  of  his  poem  cited 
by  our  author : 

"  Oh,  strange  is  the  bower  where  Brynhilda  reclines, 
Around  it  the  watch-fire  high  bickering  shines  ! 
Her  couch  is  of  iron,  her  pillow  a  shield, 
And  the  maiden's  chaste  eyes  are  in  deep  slumber  sealed  ; 
Thy  charm,  dreadful  Odin,  around  her  is  spread, 
From  thy  wand  the  dread  slumber  was  poured  on  her  head. 
Oh,  whilom  in  battle  so  bold  and  so  free, 
Like  a  Vikingr  victorious  she  roved  o'er  the  sea. 


THE  NORTHMEN.  225 

The  love-lighting  eyes,  which  are  fettered  by  sleep, 
Have  seen  the  sea-fight  raging  fierce  o'er  the  deep  ; 
And  'mid  the  dread  wounds  of  the  dying  and  slain, 
The  tide  of  destruction  poured  wide  o'er  the  plain. 

"  Who  is  it  that  spurs  his  dark  steed  at  the  fire  ? 
Who  is  it  whose  wishes  thus  boldly  aspire 
To  the  chamber  of  shields,  where  the  beautiful  maid 
By  the  spell  of  the  mighty  All-Father  is  laid  ? 
It  is  Sigurd  the  valiant,  the  slayer  of  kings, 
With  the  spoils  of  the  Dragon,  his  gold  and  his  rings." 

BRYNHILDA. 

"  Like  a  Virgin  of  the  Shield  I  roved  o'er  the  sea, 
My  arm  was  victorious,  my  valor  was  free. 
By  prowess,  by  Runic  enchantment  and  song, 
I  raised  up  the  weak,  and  I  beat  down  the  strong ; 
I  held  the  young  prince  'mid  the  hurly  of  war, 
My  arm  waved  around  him  the  charmed  scimetar ; 
I  saved  him  in  battle,  I  crowned  him  in  hall, 
Though  Odin  and  Fate  had  foredoomed  him  to  fall : 
Hence  Odin's  dread  curses  were  poured  on  my  head ; 
He  doomed  the  undaunted  Brynhilda  to  wed. 
But  I  vowed  the  high  vow  which  gods  dare  not  gainsay, 
That  the  boldest  in  warfare  should  bear  me  away : 
And  full  well  I  knew  that  thou,  Sigurd,  alone 
Of  mortals  the  boldest  in  battle  hast  shone  ; 
I  knew  that  none  other  the  furnace  could  stem 
(So  wrought  was  the  spell,  and  so  fierce  was  the  flame), 
Save  Sigurd  the  glorious,  the  slayer  of  kings, 
With  the  spoils  of  the  Dragon,  his  gold  and  his  rings." 

The  story  in  the  original  runs  through  several  cantos,  com- 
prising varied  specimens  of  those  antique  Gothic  compo- 
sitions which,  to  use  the  words  of  our  author — 
15 


226  THE  NORTHMEN. 

are  not  only  full  of  singularly  wild  and  beautiful  poetry,  and  lively 
pictures  of  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  heroic  age  of  the  ancient 
North,  its  patriarchal  simplicity,  its  deadly  feuds,  and  its  fanciful  su- 
perstition, peopling  the  earth,  air,  and  waters  with  deities,  giants, 
genii,  nymphs,  and  dwarfs,  but  there  are  many  exquisite  touches 
of  the  deepest  pathos,  to  which  the  human  heart  beats  in  unison  in 
every  age  and  in  every  land. 

Many  of  these  hyperborean  poems,  he  remarks,  have  an 
Oriental  character  and  coloring  in  their  subjects  and  im- 
agery, their  mythology  and  their  style,  bearing  internal  evi- 
dence of  their  having  been  composed  in  remote  antiquity, 
and  in  regions  less  removed  from  the  cradle  of  the  human 
race  than  the  Scandinavian  North.  "  The  oldest  of  this 
fragmentary  poetry,"  as  he  finely  observes,  "  may  be  com- 
pared to  the  gigantic  remains,  the  wrecks  of  a  more  ancient 
world,  or  to  the  ruins  of  Egypt  and  Hindostan,  speaking  a 
more  perfect  civilization,  the  glories  of  which  have  long 
since  departed. 

Our  author  gives  us  many  curious  glances  at  the  popular 
superstitions  of  the  North,  and  those  poetic  and-  mythic 
fictions  which  pervaded  the  great  Scandinavian  family  of 
nations.  The  charmed  armor  of  the  warrior;  the  dragon 
who  keeps  a  sleepless  watch  over  buried  treasure ;  the  spirits 
or  genii  that  haunt  the  rocky  tops  of  mountains,  or  the 
depths  of  quiet  lakes;  and  the  elves  or  vagrant  demons 
which  wander  through  forests  or  by  lonely  hills ;  these  are 
found  in  all  the  popular  superstitions  of  the  North.  Dit- 
marus  Blefkenius  tells  us  that  the  Icelanders  believed  in 
domestic  spirits,  which  woke  them  at  night  to  go  and  fish ; 
and  that  all  expeditions  to  which  they  were  thus  summoned 
were  eminently  fortunate.  The  water-sprites,  originating  in 


THE  NORTHMEN. 


227 


Icelandic  poetry,  may  be  traced  throughout  the  north  of 
Europe.  The  Swedes  delight  to  tell  of  the  Stromkerl,  or 
boy  of  the  stream,  who  haunts  the  glassy  brooks  that  steal 
gently  through  green  meadows,  and  sits  on  the  silver  waves 
at  moonlight,  playing  his  harp  to  the  elves  who  dance  on 
the  flowery  margin.  Scarcely  a  rivulet  in  Germany  also  but 
has  its  Nixen,  or  water-witches,  all  evidently  members  of 
the  great  Northern  family. 

Before  we  leave  this  enchanted  ground,  we  must  make  a 
few  observations  on  the  Runic  characters,  which  were  re- 
garded with  so  much  awe  in  days  of  yore,  as  locking  up 
darker  mysteries  and  more  potent  spells  than  the  once 
redoubtable  hieroglyphics  of  the  Egyptians.  The  Runic 
alphabet,  according  to  our  author,  consists  properly  of  six- 
teen letters.  Northern  tradition  attributes  them  to  Odin, 
who  perhaps  brought  them  into  Scandinavia,  but  they  have 
no  resemblance  to  any  of  the  alphabets  of  Central  Asia. 
Inscriptions  in  these  characters  are  still  to  be  seen  on  rocks 
and  stone  monuments  in  Sweden,  and  other  countries  of  the 
North,  containing  Scandinavian  verses  in  praise  of  their  an- 
cient heroes.  They  were  also  engraven  on  arms,  trinkets, 
amulets,  and  utensils,  and  sometimes  on  the  bark  of  trees, 
and  on  wooden  tablets,  for  the  purpose  of  memorials  or  of 
epistolary  correspondence.  In  one  of  the  Eddaic  poems, 
Odin  is  represented  as  boasting  the  magic  power  of  the  Ru- 
nic rhymes  to  heal  diseases  and  counteract  poison  ;  to  spell- 
bind the  arms  of  an  enemy,  to  lull  the  tempest,  to  stop  the 
career  of  witches  through  the  air,  to  raise  the  dead,  and 
extort  from  them  the  secrets  of  the  world  of  spirits.  The 
reader  who  may  desire  to  see  the  letters  of  this  all-potent 
alphabet,  will  find  them  in  Mallet's  "  Northern  Antiquities." 


228  THE  NORTHMEN. 

In  his  sixth  chapter,  Mr.  Wheaton  gives  an  account  of 
the  religion  of  Odin,  and  his  migration,  with  a  colony  of 
Scythian  Goths,  from  the  banks  of  the  Tanais,  in  Asia,  to 
the  peninsula  of  Scandinavia,  to  escape  the  Roman  legions. 
Without  emulating  his  minute  and  interesting  detail,  we  will 
merely  and  briefly  state  some  of  the  leading  particulars,  and 
refer  the  curious  reader  to  the  pages  of  his  book. 

The  expedition  of  this  mythological  hero  is  stated  to 
have  taken  place  about  seventy  years  before  the  Christian 
era,  when  Pompey  the  Great,  then  Consul  of  Rome,  finished 
the  war  with  Tigranes  and  Mithridates,  and  carried  his  vic- 
torious arms  throughout  the  most  important  parts  of  Asia. 
We  quote  a  description  of  the  wonderful  vessel  Skidblad- 
ner,  the  ship  of  the  gods,  in  which  he  made  the  voyage : 

"  Skidbladner,"  said  one  of  the  genii,  when  interrogated  by 
Gangler,  "  is  one  of  the  best  ships,  and  most  curiously  constructed. 
It  was  built  by  certain  dwarfs,  who  made  a  present  of  it  to  Freyn. 
It  is  so  vast  that  there  is  room  to  hold  all  the  deities  with  their 
armor.  As  soon  as  the  sails  are  spread,  it  directs  its  course,  with  a 
favorable  breeze,  wherever  they  desire  to  navigate ;  and  when  they 
wish  to  land,  such  is  its  marvelous  construction,  that  it  can  be  taken 
to  pieces,  rolled  up,  and  put  in  the  pocket."  "  That  is  an  excellent 
ship,  indeed,"  replied  Gangler,  "  and  must  have  required  much 
science  and  magic  art  to  construct"  (p.  118). 

With  this  very  convenient,  portable,  and  pocketable  ship, 
and  a  crew  of  Goths  of  the  race  of  Sviar,  called  by  Tacitus 
Suiones,  the  intrepid  Odin  departed  from  Scythia,  to  escape 
the  domination  of  the  Romans,  who  were  spreading  them- 
selves over  the  world.  He  took  with  him  also  his  twelve 
pontiffs,  who  were  at  once  priests  of  religion  and  judges  of 
the  law.  Whenever  sea  or  river  intervened,  he  launched  his 


THE  NORTHMEN.  22g 

good  ship  Skidbladner,  embarked  with  his  band,  and  sailed 
merrily  over;  then  landing,  and  pocketing  the  transport,  he 
again  put  himself  at  the  head  of  his  crew,  and  marched 
steadily  forward.     To  add  to  the  facilities  of  these  primi- 
tive emigrants,   Odin  was  himself  a  seer  and  a  magician. 
He  could  look  into  futurity;  could  strike  his  enemies  with 
deafness,  blindness,  and   sudden   panic;    could   blunt   the 
edge  of  their  weapons,  and  render  his  own  warriors  invisible. 
He  could  transform  himself  into  bird,  beast,  fish,  or  serpent, 
and  fly  to  the  most  distant  regions,  while  his  body  remained 
in  a  trance.     He  could,  with  a  single  word,  extinguish  fire, 
control  the  winds,  and  bring  the  dead  to  life.     He  carried 
about  with  him   an  embalmed  and  charmed  head,  which 
would  reply  to  his  questions,  and  give  him  information  of 
what  was  passing  in  the  remotest  lands.     He  had,  moreover, 
two  most  gifted  and  confidential  ravens,  who  had  the  gift  of 
speech,  and  would  fly,  on  his  behests,  to  the  uttermost  parts 
of  the  earth.     We  have  only  to  believe  in  the  supernatural 
powers  of  such  a  leader,  provided  with  such  a  ship,  and 
such  an  oracular  head,  attended  by  two  such  marvelously 
gifted  birds,  and  backed  by  a  throng  of  stanch  and  stal- 
wart Gothic   followers,  and  we  shall  not  wonder  that  he 
found  but  little  difficulty  in  making  his  way  to  the  peninsula 
of  Scandinavia,  and  in  expelling  the  aboriginal  inhabitants, 
who  seem  to  have  been  but  a  diminutive  and  stunted  race  ; 
although    there   are   not   wanting   fabulous   narrators   who 
would   fain   persuade   us   there  were   giants   among  them. 
They  were  gradually  subdued  and  reduced  to  servitude,  or 
driven  to  the  mountains,  and  subsequently  to  the  desert 
wilds  and  fastnesses  of  Norrland,   Lapland,  and    Finland, 
where  they  continued  to  adhere  to  that  form  of  polytheism 


230 


THE  NORTHMEN. 


called  fetichism,  or  the  adoration  of  birds  and  beasts,  stocks 
and  stones,  and  all  the  animate  and  inanimate  works  of  cre- 
ation. 

As  to  Odin,  he  introduced  into  his  new  dominions  the 
religion  he  had  brought  with  him  from  the  banks  of  the 
Tanais ;  but,  like  the  early  heroes  of  most  barbarous  nations, 
he  was  destined  to  become  himself  an  object  of  adoration  ; 
for,  though  to  all  appearance  he  died,  and  was  consumed  on 

a  funeral  pile,  it  was  said  that  he  was  translated  to  the  bliss- 

• 

ful  abode  of  Godheim,  there  to  enjoy  eternal  life.  In  pro- 
cess of  time  it  was  declared  that,  though  a  mere  prophet  on 
earth,  he  had  been  an  incarnation  of  the  Supreme  Deity,  and 
had  returned  to  the  sacred  hall  of  Valhalla,  the  paradise  of 
the  brave,  where,  surrounded  by  his  late  companions  in 
arms,  he  watched  over  the  deeds  and  destinies  of  the  chil- 
dren of  men. 

The  primitive  people  who  had  been  conquered  by  Odin 
and  his  followers  seem  to  have  been  as  diminutive  in  spirit 
as  in  form,  and  withal  a  rancorous  race  of  little  vermin, 
whose  expulsion  from  their  native  land  awakens  but  faint 
sympathy;  yet  candor  compels  us  to  add  that  their  con- 
querors are  not  much  more  entitled  to  our  esteem  although 
their  hardy  deeds  command  our  admiration.  The  author 
gives  a  slight  sketch  of  the  personal  peculiarities  which 
discriminated  both,  extracted  from  an  Eddaic  poem,  and 
which  is  worthy  of  notice,  as  accounting,  as  far  as  the 
authority  is  respected,  for  some  of  the  diversities  in  feature 
and  complexion  of  the  Scandinavian  races  : 

The  slave  cast,  descended  from  the  aboriginal  Finns,  were  dis- 
tinguished from  their  conquerors  by  black  hair  and  complexion.  .  .  . 
The  caste  of  freemen  and  freeholders,  lords  of  the  soil  whicl?  they 


THE  NORTHMEN. 


231 


cultivated,  and  descended  from  the  Gothic  conquerors,  had  reddish 
hair,  fair  complexion,  and  all  the  traits  which  peculiarly  mark  that 
famous  race  ....  while  the  caste  of  the  illustrious  Jarls  and  the 
Hersen,  earls  and  barons,  were  distinguished  by  still  fairer  hair  and 
skin,  and  by  noble  employments  and  manners ;  from  these  descended 
the  kingly  race,  skilled  in  Runic  science,  in  manly  exercises,  and  the 
military  art. 

The  manners,  customs,  and  superstitions  of  these  North- 
ern people,  which  afterward,  with  various  modifications,  per- 
vaded and  stamped  an  indelible  character  on  so  great  a 
part  of  Europe,  deserve  to  be  more  particularly  mentioned  ; 
and  we  give  a  brief  view  of  them,  chiefly  taken  from  the 
work  of  our  author,  and  partly  from  other  sources.  The 
religion  of  the  early  Scandinavians  taught  the  existence  of  a 
Supreme  Being,  called  Thor,  who  ruled  over  the  elements, 
purified  the  air  with  refreshing  showers,  dispensed  health 
and  sickness,  wielded  the  thunder  and  lightning,  and  with 
his  celestial  weapon,  the  rainbow,  launched  unerring  arrows 
at  the  evil  demons.  He  was  worshiped  in  a  primitive  but 
striking  manner,  amid  the  solemn  majesty  of  nature,  on  the 
tops  of  mountains,  in  the  depths  of  primeval  forests,  or  in 
those  groves  which  rose  like  natural  temples  on  islands  sur- 
rounded by  the  dark  waters  of  lonely  and  silent  lakes.  They 
had,  likewise,  their  minor  deities,  or  genii,  whom  we  have 
already  mentioned,  who  were  supposed  to  inhabit  the  sun, 
the  moon,  and  stars — the  regions  of  the  air,  the  trees,  the 
rocks,  the  brooks,  and  mountains  of  the  earth,  and  to  super- 
intend the  phenomena  of  their  respective  elements.  They 
believed,  also,  in  a  future  state  of  torment  for  the  guilty,  and 
of  voluptuous  and  sensual  enjoyment  for  the  virtuous. 

This  primitive  religion  gave  place  to  more  complicated 


23 2  THE  NORTHMEN. 

beliefs.  Odin,  elevated,  as  we  have  shown,  into  a  divinity, 
was  worshiped  as  the  Supreme  Deity,  and  with  him  was 
associated  his  wife  Freya ;  from  these  are  derived  our  Odens- 
day — Wodensday  or  Wednesday — and  our  Freytag,  or  Fri- 
day. Thor,  from  whom  comes  Thursday,  was  now  more  lim- 
ited in  his  sway,  though  he  still  bent  the  rainbow,  launched 
the  thunderbolt,  and  controlled  the  seasons.  These  three 
were  the  principal  deities,  and  held  assemblies  of  those  of 
inferior  rank  and  power.  The  mythology  had  also  its  devil, 
called  Loke,  a  most  potent  and  malignant  spirit,  and  sup- 
posed to  be  the  cause  of  all  evil. 

By  degrees  the  religious  rites  of  the  Northern  people  be- 
came more  artificial  and  ostentatious ;  they  were  performed 
in  temples  with  something  of  Asiatic  pomp.  Festivals  were 
introduced  of  symbolical  and  mystic  import,  at  the  summer 
and  the  winter  solstice,  and  at  various  other  periods,  in 
which  were  typified  not  merely  the  decline  and  renovation 
of  nature  and  the.  changes  of  the  seasons,  but  the  epochs  in 
the  moral  history  of  man.  As  the  ceremonials  of  religion 
became  more  dark  and  mysterious,  they  assumed  a  cruel 
and  sanguinary  character;  prisoners  taken  in  battle  were 
sacrificed  by  the  victors,  subjects  by  their  kings,  and  some- 
times even  children  by  their  parents.  Superstition  gradually 
spread  its  illusions  over  all  the  phenomena  of  nature,  and 
gave  each  some  occult  meaning ;  oracles,  lots,  auguries,  and 
divination  gained  implicit  faith ;  and  soothsayers  read  the 
decrees  of  fate  in  the  flight  of  birds,  the  sound  of  thunder, 
and  the  entrails  of  the  victim.  Every  man  was  supposed  to 
have  his  attendant  spirit,  his  destiny  which  it  was  out  of  his 
power  to  avert,  and  his  appointed  hour  to  die  ;  Odin,  how- 
ever, could  control  or  alter  the  destiny  of  a  mortal,  and 


THE  NORTHMEN.  233 

defer  the  fatal  hour.  It  was  believed,  also,  that  a  man's  life 
might  be  prolonged  if  another  would  devote  himself  to  death 
in  his  stead. 

The  belief  in  magic  was  the  natural  attendant  upon 
these  superstitions.  Charms  and  spells  were  practiced,  and 
the  Runic  rhymes,  known  but  to  the  gifted  few,  acquired 
their  reputation  among  the  ignorant  multitude  for  an  all- 
potent  and  terrific  influence  over  the  secrets  of  nature  and 
the  actions  and  destinies  of  man. 

As  war  was  the  principal  and  the  only  noble  occupation 
of  these  people,  their  moral  code  was  suitably  brief  and  stern. 
After  profound  devotion  to  the  gods,  valor  in  war  was  incul- 
cated as  the  supreme  virtue,  cowardice  as  the  deadly  sin. 
Those  who  fell  gloriously  in  war  were  at  once  transported  to 
Valhalla,  the  airy  hall  of  Odin,  there  to  partake  of  the 
eternal  felicities  of  the  brave.  Fighting  and  feasting,  which 
had  constituted  their  fierce  joys  on  earth,  were  lavished 
upon  them  in  this  supernal  abode.  Every  day  they  had 
combats  in  the  listed  field — the  rush  of  steeds,  the  flash  of 
swords,  the  shining  of  lances,  and  all  the  maddening  tumult 
and  din  of  battle  ;  helmets  and  bucklers  were  riven,  horses 
and  riders  overthrown,  and  ghastly  wounds  exchanged ;  but 
at  the  setting  of  the  sun  all  was  over;  victors  and  van- 
quished met  unscathed  in  glorious  companionship  around 
the  festive  board  of  Odin  in  Valhalla's  hall,  where  they  par- 
took of  the  ample  banquet  and  quaffed  full  horns  of  beer 
and  fragrant  mead.  For  the  just  who  did  not  die  in  fight  a 
more  peaceful  but  less  glorious  elysium  was  provided — a 
resplendent  golden  palace,  surrounded  by  verdant  meads 
and  shady  groves  and  fields  of  spontaneous  fertility. 

The  early  training  of  their  youth  was   suited   to   the 


234  THE  NORTHMEN. 

creed  of  this  warlike  people.  In  the  tender  days  of  child- 
hood they  were  gradually  hardened  by  athletic  exercises, 
and  nurtured  through  boyhood  in  difficult  and  daring  feats. 
At  the  age  of  fifteen  they  were  produced  before  some  pub- 
lic assemblage  and  presented  with  a  sword,  a  buckler,  and 
a  lance ;  from  that  time  forth  they  mingled  among  men,  and 
were  expected  to  support  themselves  by  hunting  or  warfare. 
But  though  thus  early  initiated  in  the  rough  and  dangerous 
concerns  of  men,  they  were  prohibited  all  indulgence  with 
the  softer  sex  until  matured  in  years  and  vigor. 

The  weapons  of  offense  were  bow  and  arrow,  battle-axe 
and  sword ;  and  the  latter  was  often  engraved  with  some 
mystic  characters,  and  bore  a  formidable  and  vaunting 
name. 

The  helmets  of  the  common  soldiery  were  of  leather, 
and  their  bucklers  leather  and  wood ;  but  warriors  of  rank 
had  helmets  and  shields  of  iron  and  brass,  sometimes  richly 
gilt  and  decorated  ;  and  they  wore  coats  of  mail,  and  occa- 
sionally plated  armor. 

A  young  chieftain  of  generous  birth  received  higher  en- 
dowments than  the  common  class.  Besides  the  hardy  exer- 
cise of  the  chase  and  the  other  exercises  connected  with 
the  use  of  arms,  he  was  initiated  betimes  into  the  sacred 
science  of  the  Runic  writing  and  instructed  in  the  ancient 
lay,  especially  if  destined  for  sovereignty,  as  every  king  was 
the  pontiff  of  his  people.  When  a  prince  had  attained  the 
age  of  eighteen  his  father  usually  gave  him  a  small  fleet  and 
a  band  of  warriors,  and  sent  him  on  some  marauding  voy- 
age, from  which  it  was  disgraceful  to  return  with  empty 
hands. 

Such  was  the  moral  and  physical  training  of  the  North- 


THE  NORTHMEN.  235 

men,  which  prepared  them  for  that  wide  and  wild  career  of 
enterprise  and  conquest  which  has  left  its  traces  all  along  the 
coasts  of  Europe,  and  thrown  communities  and  colonies,  in 
the  most  distant  regions,  to  remain  themes  of  wonder  and 
speculation  in  after-ages.  Actuated  by  the  same  roving  and 
predatory  spirit  which  had  brought  their  Scythian  ancestors 
from  the  banks  of  the  Tanais,  and  rendered  daring  navi- 
gators by  their  experience  along  the  stormy  coasts  of  the 
North,  they  soon  extended  their  warlike  roamings  over  the 
ocean  and  became  complete  maritime  marauders,  with 
whom  piracy  at  sea  was  equivalent  to  chivalry  on  shore 
and  a  freebooting  cruise  to  an  heroic  enterprise. 

For  a  time  the  barks  in  which  they  braved  the  dangers 
of  the  sea  and  infested  the  coasts  of  England  and  France 
were  mere  canoes  formed  from  the  trunks  of  trees,  and  so 
light  as  readily  to  be  carried  on  men's  shoulders  or  dragged 
along  the  land.  With  these  they  suddenly  swarmed  upon  a 
devoted  coast,  sailing  up  the  rivers,  shifting  from  stream  to 
stream,  and  often  making  their  way  back  to  the  sea  by  some 
different  river  from  that  which  they  had  ascended.  Their 
chiefs  obtained  the  appellation  of  sea-kings,  because,  to  the 
astonished  inhabitants  of  the  invaded  coasts,  they  seemed 
to  emerge  suddenly  from  the  ocean,  and,  when  they  had  fin- 
ished their  ravages,  to  retire  again  into  its  bosom  as  to  their 
native  home ;  and  they  were  rightly  named,  in  the  opinion 
of  the  author  of  a  northern  Saga,  seeing  that  their  lives 
were  passed  upon  the  waves,  and  "  they  never  sought  shel- 
ter under  a  roof  or  drained  their  drinking-horn  at  a  cottage 
fire." 

Though  plunder  seemed  to  be  the  main  object  of  this 
wild  ocean  chivalry,  they  had  still  that  passion  for  martial 


236  THE  NORTHMEN. 

renown  which  grows  up  with  the  exercise  of  arms,  however 
rude  and  lawless,  and  which  in  them  was  stimulated  by  the 
songs  of  the  Skalds. 

We  are  told  that  they  were  "  sometimes  seized  with  a 
sort  of  frenzy,  a  furor  Martis,  produced  by  their  excited 
imaginations  dwelling  upon  the  images  of  war  and  glory, 
and  perhaps  increased  by  those  potations  of  stimulating 
liquors  in  which  the  people  of  the  North,  like  other  unciv- 
ilized tribes,  indulged  to  great  excess.  When  this  madness 
was  upon  them  they  committed  the  wildest  extravagances, 
attacked  indiscriminately  friends  and  foes,  and  even  waged 
war  against  the  rocks  and  trees.  At  other  times  they  defied 
each  other  to  mortal  combat  in  some  lonely  and  desert  isle." 

Among  the  most  renowned  of  these  early  sea-kings  was 
Ragnar  Lodbrok,  famous  for  his  invasion  of  Northumbria, 
in  England,  and  no  less  famous  in  ancient  Sagas  for  his 
strange  and  cruel  death.  According  to  those  poetic  legends, 
he  was  a  King  of  Denmark,  who  ruled  his  realms  in  peace, 
without  being  troubled  with  any  dreams  of  conquest.  His 
sons,  however,  were  roving  the  seas  with  their  warlike  fol- 
lowers, and  after  a  time  tidings  of  their  heroic  exploits 
reached  his  court.  The  jealousy  of  Ragnar  was  excited, 
and  he  determined  on  an  expedition  that  should  rival  their 
achievements.  He  accordingly  ordered  "the  Arrow,"  the 
signal  of  war,  to  be  sent  through  his  dominions,  summoning 
his  "  champions  "  to  arms.  He  had  ordered  two  ships  of 
immense  size  to  be  built,  and  in  them  he  embarked  with  his 
followers.  His  faithful  and  discreet  Queen,  Aslauga,  warned 
him  of  the  perils  to  which  he  was  exposing  himself,  but  in 
vain.  He  set  sail  for  the  north  of  England,  which  had  for- 
merly been  invaded  by  his  predecessors.  The  expedition 


THE  NORTHMEN.  237 

was  driven  back  to  port  by  a  tempest.  The  Queen  repeated 
her  warnings  and  entreaties,  but,  finding  them  unavailing, 
she  gave  him  a  magical  garment  that  had  the  virtue  to  ren- 
der the  wearer  invulnerable. 

Ragnar  again  put  to  sea,  and  was  at  last  shipwrecked  on  the 
English  coast.  In  this  emergency  his  courage  did  not  desert  him, 
but  he  pushed  forward  with  his  small  band  to  ravage  and  plunder. 
Ella  collected  his  forces  to  repel  the  invader.  Ragnar,  clothed  with 
the  enchanted  garment  he  had  received  from  his  beloved  Aslauga, 
and  armed  with  the  spear  with  which  he  had  slain  the  guardian 
serpent  of  Thora,  four  times  pierced  the  Saxon  ranks,  dealing  death 
on  every  side,  while  his  own  body  was  invulnerable  to  the  blows  of 
his  enemies.  His  friends  and  champions  fell  one  by  one  around 
him,  and  he  was  at  last  taken  prisoner  alive.  Being  asked  who  he 
was,  he  preserved  an  indignant  silence.  Then  King  Ella  said,  "  If 
this  man  will  not  speak,  he  shall  endure  so  much  the  heavier  pun- 
ishment for  his  obduracy  and  contempt."  So  he  ordered  him  to  be 
thrown  into  the  dungeon  full  of  serpents,  where  he  should  remain 
till  he  told  his  name.  Ragnar,  being  thrown  into  the  dungeon,  sat 
there  a  long  time  before  the  serpents  attacked  him ;  which,  being 
noticed  by  the  spectators,  they  said  he  must  be  a  brave  man  indeed 
whom  neither  arms  nor  vipers  could  hurt.  Ella,  hearing  this, 
ordered  his  enchanted  vest  to  be  stripped  off,  and  soon  afterward 
the  serpents  clung  to  him  on  all  sides.  Then  Ragnar  said,  "  How 
the  young  cubs  would  roar  if  they  knew  what  the  old  boar  suffers  ! " 
and  expired  with  a  laugh  of  defiance  (pp.  152,  153). 

The  death-song  of  Ragnar  Lodbrok  will  be  found  in  an 
appendix  to  Henderson's  "  Iceland,"  both  in  the  original 
and  in  a  translation.  The  version,  however,  which  is  in 
prose,  conveys  but  faintly  the  poetic  spirit  of  the  original. 
It  consists  of  twenty-nine  stanzas,  most  of  them  of  nine 
lines,  and  contains,  like  the  death-song  of  a  warrior  among 


238  THE  NORTHMEN. 

the  American  Indians,  a  boastful  narrative  of  his  expedi- 
tions and  exploits.     Each  stanza  bears  the  same  burden  : 

"  Hiuggom  ver  med  hiarvi  " — 

"  We  hewed  them  with  our  swords." 

Lodbrok  exults  that  his  achievements  entitle  him  to  ad- 
mission among  the  gods ;  predicts  that  his  children  shall 
avenge  his  death ;  and  glories  that  no  sigh  shall  disgrace  his 
exit.  In  the  last  stanza  he  hails  the  arrival  of  celestial  vir- 
gins sent  to  invite  him  to  the  hall  of  Odin,  where  he  shall 
join  the  assembly  of  heroes,  sit  upon  a  lofty  throne,  and 
quaff  the  mellow  beverage  of  barley.  The  last  strophe  of 
this  death-song  is  thus  rendered  by  Mr.  Wheaton  : 

"  Cease  my  strain !    I  hear  them  call 
Who  bid  me  hence  to  Odin's  hall ! 
High  seated  in  their  blest  abodes,  % 

I  soon  shall  quaff  the  drink  of  gods. 
The  hours  of  life  have  glided  by — 
I  fall !  but  laughing  will  I  die ! 
The  hours  of  life  have  glided  by — 
I  fall !  but  laughing  will  I  die ! " 

The  sons  of  Ragnar,  if  the  Sagas  may  be  believed,  were 
not  slow  in  revenging  the  death  of  their  parent.  They  were 
absent  from  home  on  warlike  expeditions  at  the  time,  and 
did  not  hear  of  the  catastrophe  until  after  their  return  to 
Denmark.  Their  first  tidings  of  it  were  from  the  messen- 
gers of  Ella,  sent  to  propitiate  their  hostility.  When  the 
messengers  entered  the  royal  hall  they  found  the  sons  of 
Ragnar  variously  employed.  Sigurdr  Snakeseye  was  play- 
ing at  chess  with  his  brother  Huitserk  the  Brave,  while 
Bjorn  Ironside  was  polishing  the  handle  of  his  spear  in  the 


THE  NORTHMEN.  239 

middle  pavement  of  the  hall.  The  messengers  approached 
to  where  Ivar  the  other  brother  was  sitting,  and,  saluting 
him  with  due  reverence,  told  him  they  were  sent  by  King 
Ella  to  announce  the  death  of  his  royal  father. 

As  they  began  to  unfold  their  tale  Sigurdr  and  Huitserk  dropped 
their  game,  carefully  weighing  what  was  said.  Bjorn  stood  in  the 
midst  of  the  hall,  leaning  on  his  spear  ;  but  Ivar  diligently  inquired 
by  what  means  and  by  what  kind  of  death  his  father  had  perished, 
which  the  messengers  related,  from  his  first  arrival  in  England  till 
his  death.  When,  in  the  course  of  their  narrative,  they  came  to  the 
words  of  the  dying  King,  "  How  the  young  whelps  would  roar  if 
they  knew  their  father's  fate !  "  Bjorn  grasped  the  handle  of  his  spear 
so  fast  that  the  prints  of  his  fingers  remained ;  and,  when  the  tale 
was  done,  dashed  the  spear  in  pieces.  Huitserk  pressed  the  chess- 
board so  hard  with  his  hands  that  they  bled. 

Ivar  changed  color  continually,  now  red,  now  black,  now  pale, 
while  he  struggled  to  suppress  his  kindling  wrath. 

Huitserk  the  Brave,  who  first  broke  silence,  proposed  to  begin 
their  revenge  by  the  death  of  the  messengers,  which  Ivar  forbade, 
commanding  them  to  go  in  peace  wherever  they  would,  and  if  they 
wanted  anything  they  should  be  supplied. 

Their  mission  being  fulfilled,  the  delegates,  passing  through  the 
hall,  went  down  to  their  ships,  and  the  wind  being  favorable,  re- 
turned safely  to  their  King.  Ella,  hearing  from  them  how  his  mes- 
sage had  been  received  by  the  princes,  said  that  he  foresaw  that  of 
all  the  brothers  Ivar  or  none  was  to  be  feared  (pp.  188,  189). 

The  princes  summoned  their  followers,  launched  their 
fleets,  and  attacked  King  Ella  in  the  spring  of  867  : 

The  battle  took  place  at  York,  and  the  Anglo-Saxons  were  en- 
tirely routed.  The  sons  of  Ragnar  inflicted  a  cruel  and  savage 
retaliation  on  Ella  for  his  barbarous  treatment  of  their  father. 


240 


THE  NORTHMEN, 


After  this  battle  Northumbria  appears  fto  more  as  a  Saxon  king- 
dom, and  Ivar  was  made  King  over  that  part  of  England  which  his 
ancestors  had  possessed,  or  into  which  they  had  made  repeated  in- 
cursions (pp.  189,  190). 

Encouraged  by  the  success  that  attended  their  enter- 
prises in  the  northern  seas,  the  Northmen  now  urged  their 
adventurous  prows  into  more  distant  regions,  besetting  the 
southern  coasts  of  France  with  their  fleets  of  light  and  di- 
minutive barks.  Charlemagne  is  said  to  have  witnessed  the 
inroad  of  one  of  their  fleets  from  the  windows  of  his  palace 
in  the  harbor  of  Narbonne,  upon  which  he  lamented  the 
fate  of  his  successors,  who  would  have  to  contend  with  such 
audacious  invaders.  They  entered  the  Loire,  sacked  the 
city  of  Nantes,  and  carried  their  victorious  arms  up  to 
Tours.  They  ascended  the  Garonne,  pillaged  Bordeaux,  and 
extended  their  incursion  even  to  Toulouse.  They  also  en- 
tered the  Seine  in  845,  ravaging  its  banks,  and,  pushing  their 
enterprise  to  the  very  gates  of  Paris,  compelled  the  monarch 
Charles  to  take  refuge  in  the  monastery  of  St.  Denis,  where 
he  was  fain  to  receive  the  piratical  chieftain  Regnier,  and  to 
pay  him  a  tribute  of  seven  thousand  pounds  of  silver  on 
condition  of  his  evacuating  his  capital  and  kingdom.  Re- 
gnier, besides  immense  booty,  carried  back  to  Denmark  as 
trophies  of  his  triumph  a  beam  from  the  abbey  of  St.  Ger- 
main and  a  nail  from  the  gate  of  Paris ;  but  his  followers 
spread  over  their  native  country  a  contagious  disease  which 
they  had  contracted  in  France. 

Spain  was  in  like  manner  subject  to  their  invasions. 
They  ascended  the  Guadalquivir,  attacked  the  great  city  of 
Seville,  and  demolished  its  fortifications  after  severe  battles 
with  the  Moors,  who  were  then  sovereigns  of  that  country, 


THE  NORTHMEN.  241 

and  who  regarded  these  unknown  invaders  from  the  sea  as 
magicians,  on  account  of  their  wonderful  daring  and  still 
more  wonderful  success.  As  the  author  well  observes,  "  the 
contrast  between  these  two  races  of  fanatic  barbarians,  the 
one  issuing  forth  from  the  frozen  regions  of  the  North,  the 
other  from  the  burning  sands  of  Asia  and  Africa,  forms  one 
of  the  most  striking  pictures  presented  by  history." 

The  straits  of  Gibraltar  being  passed  by  these  rovers  of 
the  North,  the  Mediterranean  became  another  region  for 
their  exploits.  Hastings,  one  of  their  boldest  chieftains, 
and  father  of  that  Hastings  who  afterward  battled  with  King 
Alfred  for  the  sovereignty  of  England,  accompanied  by 
Bjorn  Ironside  and  Sydroc,  two  sons  of  Ragnar  Lodbrok, 
undertook  an  expedition  against  Rome,  the  capital  of  the 
world,  tempted  by  accounts  of  its  opulence  and  splendor, 
but  not  precisely  acquainted  with  its  site.  They  penetrated 
the  Mediterranean  with  a  fleet  of  one  hundred  barks,  and 
entered  the  port  of  Luna  in  Tuscany,  an  ancient  city,  whose 
high  walls  and  towers  and  stately  edifices  made  them  mis- 
take it  for  imperial  Rome  : 

The  inhabitants  were  celebrating  the  festival  of  Christmas  in 
the  cathedral,  when  the  news  was  spread  among  them  of  the  arrival 
of  a  fleet  of  unknown  strangers.  The  church  was  instantly  de- 
serted, and  the  citizens  ran  to  shut  the  gates,  and  prepared  to  defend 
their  town.  Hastings  sent  a  herald  to  inform  the  Count  and  Bishop 
of  Luna  that  he  and  his  band  were  Northmen,  conquerors  of  the 
Franks,  who  designed  no  harm  to  the  inhabitants  of  Italy,  but  merely 
sought  to  repair  their  shattered  barks.  In  order  to  inspire  more 
confidence,  Hastings  pretended  to  be  weary  of  the  wandering  life 
he  had  so  long  led,  and  desired  to  find  repose  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Christian  Church.  The  Bishop  and  the  Count  furnished  the  fleet 
16 


242  THE  NORTHMEN. 

with  the  needful  succor ;  Hastings  was  baptized  ;  but  still  his  Nor- 
man followers  were  not  admitted  within  the  city  walls.  Their  chief 
was  then  obliged  to  resort  to  another  stratagem  :  he  feigned  to  be 
dangerously  ill ;  his  camp  resounded  with  the  lamentations  of  his 
followers ;  he  declared  his  intention  of  leaving  the  rich  booty  he  had 
acquired  to  the  Church,  provided  they  would  grant  him  sepulture  in 
holy  ground.  The  wild  howl  of  the  Normans  soon  announced  the 
death  of  their  chieftain.  The  inhabitants  followed  the  funeral  pro- 
cession to  the  church,  but,  at  the  moment  they  were  about  to  deposit 
his  apparently  lifeless  body,  Hastings  started  up  from  his  coffin,  and, 
seizing  his  sword,  struck  down  the  officiating  Bishop.  His  followers 
instantly  obeyed  this  signal  of  treachery  ;  they  drew  from  under  their 
garments  their  concealed  weapons,  massacred  the  clergy  and  others 
who  assisted  at  the  ceremony,  and  spread  havoc  and  consternation 
throughout  the  town.  Having  thus  become  master  of  Luna,  the 
Norman  chieftain  discovered  his  error,  and  found  that  he  was  still 
far  from  Rome,  which  was  not  likely  to  fall  so  easy  a  prey.  After 
having  transported  on  board  his  barks  the  wealth  of  the  city,  as  well 
as  the  most  beautiful  women,  and  the  young  men  capable  of  bear- 
ing arms  or  of  rowing,  he  put  to  sea,  intending  to  return  to  the  North. 
The  Italian  traditions  as  to  the  destruction  of  this  city  resem- 
ble more  nearly  the  romance  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  than  the  history 
of  the  Scandinavian  adventurer.  According  to  these  accounts,  the 
Prince  of  Luna  was  inflamed  with  the  beauty  of  a  certain  young 
Empress,  then  traveling  in  company  with  the  Emperor  her  husband. 
Their  passion  was  mutual,  and  the  two  lovers  had  recourse  to  the 
following  stratagem,  in  order  to  accomplish  their  union  :  The  Em- 
press feigned  to  be  grievously  sick ;  she  was  believed  to  be  dead ; 
her  funeral  obsequies  were  duly  celebrated,  but  she  escaped  from 
the  sepulchre,  and  secretly  rejoined  her  lover.  The  Emperor  had 
no  sooner  heard  of  their  crime  than  he  marched  to  attack  the  resi- 
dence of  the  ravisher,  and  avenged  himself  by  the  entire  destruction 
of  the  once  flourishing  city  of  Luna.  The  only  point  of  resemblance 
between  these  two  stories  consists  in  the  romantic  incident  of  the 


THE  NORTHMEN.  243 

destruction  of  the  city  by  means  of  a  feigned  death,  a  legend  which 
spread  abroad  over  Italy  and  France. 

The  last  and  greatest  of  the  sea-kings,  or  pirates  of  the 
North,  was  Rollo,  surnamed  Ferus  Fortis,  the  Lusty  Boar  or 
Hardy  Beast,  from  whom  William  the  Conqueror  comes  in 
lineal  though  not  legitimate  descent.  Our  limits  do  not  per- 
mit us  to  detail  the  early  history  of  this  warrior,  as  selected 
by  our  author  from  among  the  fables  of  the  Norman  chroni- 
cles, and  the  more  simple  and,  he  thinks,  more  veritable 
narratives  in  the  Icelandic  Sagas.  We  shall  merely  state 
that  Rollo  arrived  with  a  band  of  Northmen,  all  fugitive  ad- 
venturers, like  himself,  upon  the  coast  of  France  ;  ascended 
the  Seine  to  Rouen,  subjugated  the  fertile  province  then 
called  Neustria,  named  it  Normandy  from  the  Northmen, 
his  followers,  and  crowned  himself  first  duke. 

Under  his  firm  and  vigorous  rule,  the  blessings  of  order  and 
peace  were  restored  to  a  country  which  had  so  long  and  so  cruelly 
suffered  from  the  incursions  of  the  northern  adventurers.  He  tol- 
erated the  Christians  in  their  worship,  and  they  flocked  in  crowds 
to  live  under  the  dominion  of  a  pagan  and  barbarian,  in  preference 
to  their  own  native  and  Christian  prince  (Charles  the  Simple)  who 
was  unwilling  or  incapable  to  protect  them. 

Rollo  established  in  his  duchy  of  Normandy  a  feudal 
aristocracy,  or  rather  it  grew  out  of  the  circumstances  of  the 
country.  His  followers  elected  him  duke,  and  he  made 
them  counts  and  barons  and  knights.  The  clergy  also 
pressed  themselves  into  his  great  council  or  Parliament. 
The  laws  were  reduced  to  a  system  by  men  of  acute  intel- 
lect, and  this  system  of  feudal  law  was  subsequently  trans- 


244 


THE  NORTHMEN. 


planted  by  William  the  Conqueror  into  England,  as  a  means 
of  consolidating  his  power  and  establishing  his  monarchy. 

Rollo  is  said  also  to  have  established  the  Court  of  Exchequer 
as  the  supreme  tribunal  of  justice  ;  and  the  perfect  security  afforded 
by  the  admirable  system  of  police  established  in  England  by  King 
Alfred  is  likewise  attributed  to  the  legislation  of  the  first  Duke  of 
Normandy  (p.  252). 

Trial  by  battle,  or  judicial  combat,  was  a  favorite  appeal 
to  God  by  the  warlike  nations  of  Scandinavia,  as  by  most  of 
the  barbarous  tribes  who  established  themselves  on  the  ruin 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  had  fallen  into  disuse  in  France, 
but  was  revived  by  Rollo  in  Normandy,  although  the  clergy 
were  solicitous  to  substitute  the  ordeal  of  fire  and  water, 
which  brought  controversies  within  their  control.  The  fierce 
Norman  warriors  disdained  this  clerical  mode  of  decision, 
and  strenuously  insisted  on  the  appeal  to  the  sword.  They 
afterward,  at  the  Conquest,  introduced  the  trial  by  combat 
into  England,  where  it  became  a  part  of  the  common  law.* 

*  A  statue  or  effigy  of  Rollo,  over  a  sarcophagus,  is  still  to  be  seen  in 
the  cathedral  at  Rouen,  with  a  Latin  inscription  stating  that  he  was  con- 
verted to  Christianity  in  913,  and  died  in  917,  and  that  his  bones  were 
removed  to  this  spot  from  their  place  of  original  sepulture  in  A.  D.  1068. 
The  ancient  epitaph,  in  rhyming  monkish  Latin,  has  been  lost,  except  the 
following  lines : 

"  Dux  Normanorum 

Cunctorum, 
Norma  Bonorum, 
Rollo,  Ferus  fortis, 
Quern  gens  Normanica  mortis 
Invocat  articulo, 
Clauditur  hoc  tumulo." 

Imitation. 

"  Rollo,  that  hardy  Boar 
Renowned  of  yore, 


THE  NORTHMEN.  245 

A  spirit  of  chivalry  and  love  of  daring  adventure,  a  ro- 
mantic gallantry  toward  the  sex,  and  a  zealous  devotion 
were  blended  in  the  character  of  the  Norman  knights.  These 
high  and  generous  feelings  they  brought  with  them  into 
England,  and  bore  with  them  in  their  crusades  into  the  Holy 
Land.  Poetry  also  continued  to  be  cherished  and  cultivated 
among  them,  and  the  Norman  troubadour  succeeded  to  the 
Scandinavian  skald.  The  Dukes  of  Normandy  and  Anglo- 
Norman  Kings  were  practicers  as  well  as  patrons  of  this  de- 
lightful art ;  and  Henry  I.,  surnamed  Beauclerc,  and  Richard 
Cceur  de  Lion,  were  distinguished  among  the  poetical  com- 
posers of  their  day. 

The  Norman  minstrels  (to  quote  the  words  of  our  author)  ap- 
propriated the  fictions  they  found  already  accredited  among  the 
people  for  whom  they  versified  —  the  British  King  Arthur,  his 
fabled  knights  of  the  Round  Table,  and  the  enchanter  Merlin  with 
his  wonderful  prophecies ;  the  Frankish  monarch  Charlemagne  and 
his  paladins ;  and  the  rich  inventions  of  Oriental  fancy  borrowed 
from  the  Arabs  and  the  Moors  (p.  262). 

We  have  thus  cursorily  accompanied  our  author  in  his 
details  of  the  origin  and  character,  the  laws  and  superstitions, 
and  primitive  religion,  and  also  of  the  roving  expeditions 
and  conquests  of  the  Northmen ;  and  we  give  him  credit 
for  the  judgment,  and  candor,  and  careful  research  with 
which  he  has  gleaned  and  collated  his  interesting  facts  from 

Of  all  the  Normans  Duke ; 
Whose  name  with  dying  breath 

In  article  of  death, 
All  Norman  knights  invoke  ; 

That  mirror  of  the  bold, 

This  tomb  doth  hold." 


246  THE  NORTHMEN. 

the  rubbish  of  fables  and  fictions  with  which  they  were  be- 
wildered and  obscured. 

Another  leading  feature  in  his  work  is  the  conversion  of 
the  Northmen,  and  the  countries  from  which  they  came,  to 
the  Christian  faith.  An  attempt  to  condense  or  analyze  this 
part  of  his  work  would  lead  us  too  far,  and  do  injustice  to 
the  minuteness  and  accuracy  of  his  details.  We  must,  for 
like  reasons,  refer  the  reader  to  the  work  itself  for  the  resi- 
due of  its  contents.  We  shall  merely  remark  that  he  goes 
over  the  same  ground  with  the  English  historians,  Hume, 
Turner,  Lingard,  and  Palgrave,  gleaning  from  the  original 
authorities  whatever  may  have  been  omitted  by  them.  He 
has  also  occasionally  corrected  some  errors  into  which  they 
have  fallen,  through  want  of  more  complete  access  or  more 
critical  attention  to  the  Icelandic  Sagas  and  the  Danish  and 
Swedish  historians,  who  narrated  the  successful  invasion  of 
England  by  the  Danes  under  Canute,  and  its  final  conquest 
by  William  of  Normandy. 

We  shall  take  leave  of  our  author  with  some  extracts 
from  the  triumphant  invasion  of  William,  premising  a  few 
words  concerning  his  origin  and  early  history.  Robert, 
Duke  of  Normandy,  called  Robert  the  Magnificent  by  his 
flatterers,  but  more  commonly  known  as  Robert  the  Devil, 
from  his  wild  and  savage  nature,  had  an  amour  with  Arlette, 
the  daughter  of  a  tanner,  or  currier,  of  Falaise,  in  Normandy. 
The  damsel  gave  birth  to  a  male  child,  who  was  called 
William.  While  the  boy  was  yet  in  childhood,  Robert  the 
Devil  resolved  to  expiate  his  sins  by  a  pilgrimage  to  the 
Holy  Land,  and  compelled  his  counts  and  barons  to  swear 
fealty  to  his  son.  "Par  ma  foi,"  said  Robert,  "je  ne  vous 
laisserai  point  sans  seigneur.  J'ai  un  petit  batard  qui  gran- 


THE  NORTHMEN.  247 

dira  s'il  plait  a  Dieu.  Choisissez-le des  ce  present,  et  je  le 
saiserai  devant  vous  de  ce  duche  comme  mon  successeur." 
The  Norman  lords  placed  their  hands  between  the  hands 
of  the  child,  and  swore  fidelity  to  him  according  to  feudal 
usage.  Robert  the  Devil  set  out  on  his  pious  pilgrimage, 
and  died  at  Nice.  The  right  of  the  boy  William  was  con- 
tested by  Guy,  Count  of  Burgundy,  and  other  claimants, 
but  he  made  it  good  with  his  sword,  and  then  confirmed  it 
by  espousing  Matilda,  daughter  of  the  Count  of  Flanders. 

On  the  death  of  Edward  the  Confessor,  King  of  Eng- 
land, Harold,  from  his  fleetness  surnamed  Harefoot,  one  of 
the  bravest  nobles  of  the  realm,  assumed  the  crown,  to  the 
exclusion  of  Edgar  Atheling,  the  lawful  heir.  It  was  said 
that  Edward  had  named  Harold  to  succeed  him.  William, 
Duke  of  Normandy,  laid  claim  to  the  English  throne.  We 
have  not  room  in  this  review  to  investigate  his  title,  which 
was  little  more  than  bare  pretension.  He  alleged  that  Ed- 
ward the  Confessor  had  promised  to  bequeath  to  him  the 
crown,  but  his  chief  reliance  was  upon  his  sword.  Harold, 
while  yet  a  subject,  had  fallen  by  accident  within  the  power 
of  William,  who  had  obtained  from  him  by  cajolery  and 
extortion  an  oath,  sworn  on  certain  sacred  relics,  not  to 
impede  him  in  his  plans  to  gain  the  English  crown. 

William  prepared  an  expedition  in  Normandy,  and  pub- 
lished a  war  ban,  inviting  adventurers  of  all  countries  to 
join  him  in  the  invasion  of  England,  and  partake  the  pil- 
lage. He  procured  a  consecrated  banner  from  the  Pope 
under  the  promise  of  a  portion  of  the  spoil,  and  embarked 
a  force  of  nearly  sixty  thousand  men  on  board  four  hundred 
vessels  and  above  a  thousand  boats. 

The  ship  which  bore  William  preceded  the  rest  of  the  fleet, 


248  THE  NORTHMEN. 

with  the  consecrated  banner  of  the  Pope  displayed  at  the  mast-head, 
its  many-colored  sails  embellished  with  the  lions  of  Normandy,  and 
its  prow  adorned  with  the  figure  of  an  infant  archer  bending  his 
bow  and  ready  to  let  fly  his  arrow. 

William  landed  his  force  at  Pevensey,  near  Hastings,  on 
the  coast  of  Sussex,  on  September  28,  1066 ;  and  we  shall 
state  from  the  Norman  chronicles  some  few  particulars  of 
this  interesting  event,  not  included  in  the  volume  under 
review.  The  archers  disembarked  first — they  had  short 
vestments  and  cropped  hair;  then  the  horsemen,  armed 
with  coats  of  mail,  caps  of  iron,  straight  two-edged  swords, 
and  long,  powerful  lances ;  then  the  pioneers  and  artificers, 
who  disembarked,  piece  by  piece,  the  materials  for  three 
wooden  towers,  all  ready  to  be  put  together.  The  Duke 
was  the  last  to  land,  for,  says  the  chronicle,  "  there  was  no 
opposing  enemy."  King  Harold  was  in  Northumbria,  re- 
pelling an  army  of  Norwegian  invaders. 

As  William  leaped  on  shore,  he  stumbled  and  fell  upon 
his  face.  Exclamations  of  foreboding  were  heard  among 
his  followers ;  but  he  grasped  the  earth  with  his  hands,  and, 
raising  them  filled  with  it  toward  the  heavens,  "  Thus,"  cried 
he,  "  do  I  seize  upon  this  land,  and,  by  the  splendor  of  God, 
as  far  as  it  extends  it  shall  be  mine."  His  ready  wit  thus 
converted  a  sinister  accident  into  a  favorable  omen.  Hav- 
ing pitched  his  camp  and  reared  his  wooden  towers  near  to 
the  town  of  Hastings,  he  sent  forth  his  troops  to  forage  and 
lay  waste  the  country ;  nor  were  even  the  churches  and 
cemeteries  held  sacred  to  which  the  English  had  fled  for 
refuge. 

Harold  was  at  York,  reposing  after  a  victory  over  the 
Norwegians,  in  which  he  had  been  wounded,  when  he  heard 


THE  NORTHMEN.  249 

of  this  new  invasion.  Undervaluing  the  foe,  he  set  forth 
instantly  with  such  force  as  he  could  muster,  though  a  few 
days'  delay  would  have  brought  great  reinforcements.  On 
his  way  he  met  a  Norman  monk,  sent  to  him  by  William, 
with  three  alternatives:  i.  To  abdicate  in  his  favor;  2.  To 
refer  their  claims  to  the  decision  of  the  Pope ;  3.  To  deter- 
mine them  by  single  combat.  Harold  refused  all  three,  and 
quickened  his  march ;  but  finding,  as  he  drew  nearer,  that 
the  Norman  army  was  thrice  the  number  of  his  own,  he  in- 
trenched his  host  seven  miles  from  their  camp,  upon  a  range 
of  hills,  behind  a  rampart  of  palisades  and  osier  hurdles. 

The  impending  night  of  the  battle  was  passed  by  the 
Normans  in  warlike  preparations,  or  in  confessing  their  sins 
and  receiving  the  sacrament,  and  the  camp  resounded  with 
the  prayers  and  chantings  of  priests  and  friars.  As  to  the 
Saxon  warriors,  they  sat  round  their  camp-fires,  carousing 
horns  of  beer  and  wine,  and  singing  old  national  war-songs. 

At  an  early  hour  in  the  morning  of  the  i4th  of  October, 
Odo,  Bishop  of  Bayeux,  and  bastard  brother  of  the  Duke, 
being  the  son  of  his  mother  Arlette  by  a  burgher  of  Falaise, 
celebrated  mass,  and  gave  his  benediction  to  the  Norman 
army.  He  then  put  a  hauberk  under  his  cassock,  mounted 
a  powerful  white  charger,  and  led  forth  a  brigade  of  cavalry ; 
for  he  was  as  ready  with  the  spear  as  with  the  crosier,  and 
for  his  fighting  and  other  turbulent  propensities  well  merited 
his  surname  of  Odo  the  Unruly. 

The  army  was  formed  into  three  columns  :  one  composed 
of  mercenaries  from  the  countries  of  Boulogne  and  Pon- 
thieu ;  the  second  of  auxiliaries  from  Brittany  and  else- 
where ;  the  third  of  Norman  troops,  led  by  William  in  per- 
son. Each  column  was  preceded  by  archers  in  light,  quilted 


250 


THE  NORTHMEN. 


coats  instead  of  armor,  some  with  long-bows,  and  others 
with  cross-bows  of  steel.  Their  mode  of  fighting  was  to 
discharge  a  flight  of  arrows,  and  then  retreat  behind  the 
heavy-armed  troops.  The  Duke  was  mounted  on  a  Spanish 
steed,  around  his  neck  were  suspended  some  of  the  relics 
on  which  Harold  had  made  oath,  and  the  consecrated  stand- 
ard was  borne  at  his  side. 

William  harangued  his  soldiers,  reminding  them  of  the 
exploits  of  their  ancestors,  the  massacre  of  the  Northmen  in 
England,  and,  in  particular,  the  murder  of  their  brethren 
the  Danes.  But  he  added  another  and  a  stronger  excite- 
ment to  their  valor :  "  Fight  manfully,  and  put  all  to  the 
sword ;  and,  if  we  conquer,  we  shall  all  be  rich.  What  I 
gain,  you  gain;  what  I  conquer,  you  conquer;  if  I  gain  the 
land,  it  is  yours."  We  shall  give,  in  our  author's  own 
words,  the  further  particulars  of  this  decisive  battle  which 
placed  a  Norman  sovereign  on  the  English  throne : 

The  spot  which  Harold  had  selected  for  this  ever-memorable 
contest  was  a  high  ground,  then  called  Senlac,  nine  miles  from 
Hastings,  opening  to  the  south,  and  covered  in  the  rear  by  an  ex- 
tensive wood.  He  posted  his  troops  on  the  declivity  of  the  hill  in 
one  compact  mass,  covered  with  their  shields,  and  wielding  their 
enormous  battle-axes.  In  the  center  the  royal  standard,  or  gon- 
falon, was  fixed  in  the  ground,  with  the  figure  of  an  armed  warrior, 
worked  in  thread  of  gold,  and  ornamented  with  precious  stones. 
Here  stood  Harold,  and  his  brothers  Gurth  and  Leofwin,  and  around 
them  the  rest  of  the  Saxon  army,  every  man  on  foot. 

As  the  Normans  approached  the  Saxon  intrenchments,  the 
monks  and  priests  who  accompanied  their  army  retired  to  a  neigh- 
boring hill  to  pray  and  observe  the  issue  of  the  battle.  A  Norman 
warrior  named  Taillefer,  spurred  his  horse  in  front  of  the  line,  and, 
tossing  up  in  the  air  his  sword,  which  he  caught  again  in  his  hand, 


THE  NORTHMEN. 


251 


sang  the  national  song  of  Charlemagne  and  Roland  ;  the  Normans 
joined  in  the  chorus,  and  shouted,  "  Dieu  aide  !  Dieu  aide ! "  They 
were  answered  by  the  Saxons,  with  the  adverse  cry  of  "Christ's 
rood  !  the  holy  rood  !  " 

The  Norman  archers  let  fly  a  shower  of  arrows  into  the  Saxon 
ranks.  Their  infantry  and  cavalry  advanced  to  the  gates  of  the 
redoubts,  which  they  vainly  endeavored  to  force.  The  Saxons  thun- 
dered upon  their  armor,  and  broke  their  lances  with  the  heavy 
battle-axe,  and  the  Normans  retreated  to  the  division  commanded 
by  William.  The  Duke  then  caused  his  archers  again  to  advance, 
and  to  direct  their  arrows  obliquely  in  the  air,  so  that  they  might 
fall  beyond  and  over  the  enemy's  rampart.  The  Saxons  were  se- 
verely galled  by  the  Norman  missiles,  and  Harold  himself  was 
wounded  in  the  eye.  The  attack  of  the  infantry  and  men-at-arms 
again  commenced  with  the  cries  of  "  Notre-Dame !  Dieu  aide ! 
Dieu  aide  ! "  But  the  Normans  were  repulsed  and  pursued  by  the 
Saxons  to  a  deep  ravine,  where  their  horses  plunged  and  threw  the 
riders.  The  m$l£e  was  here  dreadful,  and  a  sudden  panic  seized 
the  invaders,  who  fled  from  the  field,  exclaiming  that  their  duke 
was  slain.  William  rushed  before  the  fugitives,  with  his  helmet  in 
hand,  menacing  and  even  striking  them  with  his  lance,  and  shout- 
ing with  a  loud  voice,  "  I  am  still  alive,  and,  with  the  help  of  God, 
I  still  shall  conquer ! "  The  men-at-arms  once  more  returned  to 
attack  the  redoubts,  but  they  were  again  repelled  by  the  impreg- 
nable phalanx  of  the  Saxons.  The  Duke  now  resorted  to  the 
stratagem  of  ordering  a  thousand  horse  to  advance  and  then  sud- 
denly retreat,  in  the  hope  of  drawing  the  enemy  from  his  intrench- 
ments.  The  Saxons  fell  into  the  snare,  and  rushed  out  with  their 
battle-axes  slung  about  their  necks,  to  pursue  the  flying  foe.  The 
Normans  were  joined  by  another  body  of  their  own  army,  and  both 
turned  upon  the  Saxons,  who  were  assailed  on  every  side  with 
swords  and  lances,  while  their  hands  were  employed  in  wielding 
their  enormous  battle-axes.  The  invaders  now  rushed  through  the 
broken  ranks  of  their  opponents  into  the  intrenchments,  pulled 


252 


THE  NORTHMEN. 


down  the  royal  standard,  and  erected  in  its  place  the  papal  banner. 
Harold  was  slain,  with  his  brothers  Gurth  and  Leofwin.  The  sun 
declined  in  the  western  horizon,  and  with  his  retiring  beams  sunk 
the  glory  of  the  Saxon  name. 

The  rest  of  the  companions  of  Harold  fled  from  the  fatal  field, 
where  the  Normans  passed  the  night,  exulting  over  their  hard- 
earned  victory.  The  next  morning  William  ranged  his  troops  under 
arms,  and  every  man  who  passed  the  sea  was  called  by  name,  ac- 
cording to  the  muster-roll  drawn  up  before  their  embarkation  at 
St.  Valery.  Many  were  deaf  to  that  call.  The  invading  army  con- 
sisted originally  of  nearly  sixty  thousand  men,  and  of  these  one- 
fourth  lay  dead  on  the  field.  To  the  fortunate  survivors  was  allotted 
the  spoil  of  the  vanquished  Saxons,  as  the  first  fruits  of  their  vic- 
tory ;  and  the  bodies  of  the  slain,  after  being  stripped,  were  hastily 
buried  by  their  trembling  friends.  According  to  one  narrative,  the 
body  of  Harold  was  begged  by  his  mother  as  a  boon  from  William, 
to  whom  she  offered  as  a  ransom  its  weight  in  gold.  But  the  stern 
and  pitiless  conqueror  ordered  the  corpse  of  the  Saxon  King  to  be 
buried  on  the  beach,  adding  with  a  sneer :  "He  guarded  the  coast 
while  he  lived ;  let  him  continue  to  guard  it  now  he  is  dead."  An- 
other account  represents  that  two  monks  of  the  monastery  of  Wal- 
tham,  which  had  been  founded  by  the  son  of  Godwin,  humbly 
approached  the  Norman  and  offered  him  ten  marks  of  gold  for  per- 
mission to  bury  their  king  and  benefactor.  They  were  unable  to 
distinguish  his  body  among  the  heaps  of  slain,  and  sent  for  Harold's 
mistress  Editha,  surnamed  "  The  Fair  "  and  "  The  Swan's  Neck," 
to  assist  them  in  the  search.  The  features  of  the  Saxon  monarch 
were  recognized  by  her  whom  he  had  loved,  and  his  body  was  in- 
terred at  Waltham,  with  regal  honors,  in  the  presence  of  several 
Norman  earls  and  knights. 

We  have  reached  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Wheaton's  inter- 
esting volume,  yet  we  are  tempted  to  add  a  few  words  more 
from  other  sources.  We  would  observe  that  there  are  not 


THE  NORTHMEN. 


253 


wanting  historians  who  dispute  the  whole  story  of  Harold 
having  fallen  on  the  field  of  battle.  "  Years  afterward,"  we 
are  told  by  one  of  the  most  curiously  learned  of  English 
scholars,  "  when  the  Norman  yoke  pressed  heavily  upon  the 
English,  and  the  battle  of  Hastings  had  become  a  tale  of 
sorrow,  which  old  men  narrated  by  the  light  of  the  embers 
until  warned  to  silence  by  the  sullen  tolling  of  the  curfew," 
there  was  an  ancient  anchorite,  maimed,  and  scarred,  and 
blind  of  an  eye,  who  led  a  life  of  penitence  and  seclusion  in 
a  cell  near  the  Abbey  of  St.  John  at  Chester.  This  holy 
man  was  once  visited  by  Henry  I.,  who  held  a  long  and  se- 
cret discourse  with  him,  and  on  his  death-bed  he  declared 
to  the  attendant  monks  that  he  was  Harold.*  According  to 
this  account,  he  had  been  secretly  conveyed  from  the  field 
of  battle  to  a  castle,  and  thence  to  this  sanctuary ;  and  the 
finding  and  burying  of  his  corpse  by  the  tender  Editha  is 
supposed  to  have  been  a  pious  fraud.  The  monks  of  Wal- 
tham,  however,  stood  up  stoutly  for  the  authenticity  of  their 
royal  relics.  They  showed  a  tomb  inclosing  a  moldering 
skeleton,  the  bones  of  which  still  bore  the  marks  of  wounds 
received  in  battle,  while  the  sepulchre  bore  the  effigies  of 
the  monarch,  and  this  brief  but  pathetic  epitaph,  "  Hie  jacet 
Harold  infelix." 

For  a  long  time  after  the  eventful  battle  of  the  Conquest 
it  is  said  that  traces  of  blood  might  be  seen  upon  the  field, 
and,  in  particular,  upon  the  hills  to  the  southwest  of  Hast- 
ings, whenever  a  light  rain  moistened  the  soil.  It  is  prob- 
able they  were  discolorations  of  the  soil,  where  heaps  of 
the  slain  had  been  buried.  We  have  ourselves  seen  broad 

*  Palgrave,  "  History  of  England,"  cap.  xv. 


254 


THE  NORTHMEN. 


and  dark  patches  on  the  hillside  of  Waterloo,  where  thou- 
sands of  the  dead  lay  moldering  in  one  common  grave,  and 
where,  for  several  years  after  the.  battle,  the  rank  green  corn 
refused  to  ripen,  though  all  the  other  part  of  the  hill  was 
covered  with  a  golden  harvest. 

William  the  Conqueror,  in  fulfillment  of  a  vow,  caused  a 
monastic  pile  to  be  erected  on  the  field,  which,  in  com- 
memoration of  the  event,  was  called  the  "Abbey  of  Battle." 
The  architects  complained  that  there  were  no  springs  of 
water  on  the  site.  "  Work  on  !  work  on  !  "  replied  he  jovi- 
ally ;  "  if  God  but  grant  me  life,  there  shall  flow  more  good 
wine  among  the  holy  friars  of  this  convent  than  there  does 
clear  water  in  the  best  monastery  of  Christendom." 

The  abbey  was  richly  endowed,  and  invested  with  archi- 
episcopal  jurisdiction.  In  its  archives  was  deposited  a  roll 
bearing  the  names  of  the  followers  of  William,  among  whom 
he  had  shared  the  conquered  land.  The  grand  altar  was 
placed  on  the  very  spot  where  the  banner  of  the  hapless 
Harold  had  been  unfurled,  and  here  prayers  were  perpetu- 
ally to  be  offered  up  for  the  repose  of  all  who  had  fallen  in 
the  contest.  "  All  this  pomp  and  solemnity,"  adds  Mr.  Pal- 
grave,  "has  passed  away  like  a  dream!  The  perpetual 
prayer  has  ceased  for  ever ;  the  roll  of  battle  is  rent ;  the 
escutcheons  of  the  Norman  lineages  are  trodden  in  the 
dust.  A  dark  and  reedy  pool  marks  where  the  abbey  once 
reared  its  stately  towers,  and  nothing  but  the  foundations 
of  the  choir  remain  for  the  gaze  of  the  idle  visitor,  and  the 
instruction  of  the  moping  antiquary."  * 

*  Palgrave,  "  History  of  England,"  cap.  xv. 


THE  EARL    OF  CHESTERFIELD* 


A  CENTURY  has  rolled  away  since  Lord  Chesterfield 
reached  his  highest  point  of  worldly  elevation,  and  now 
comes  a  republication  of  his  letters,  in  a  collective  form,  to 
press  upon  us  the  question,  how  his  reputation  stands  the 
wear  of  time.  It  is  not  often  that  a  nobleman  born  leaves 
much  trace  of  his  existence,  out  of  the  pages  of  a  peerage- 
book.  Still  more  rarely  is  it  that  he  exerts  a  decided  influ- 
ence over  the  generations  that  come  after  him.  Chesterfield 
is,  then,  an  exception  to  the  general  rule.  Although  one  of 
the  genuine  aristocracy,  owing  his  title  to  no  modern  cre- 
ation, he  made  himself  a  reputation  which  few  of  his  coun- 
trymen equaled  in  his  own  day ;  and,  which  is  perhaps  more 
remarkable,  he  left  his  mark  upon  the  mind  and  manners 
of  the  English  race  so  deep,  that  it  will  be  long  before  it  is 
entirely  effaced.  No  man  ever  put  into  more  attractive 
shape  the  maxims  of  a  worldly,  epicurean  philosophy.  No 
man  ever  furnished,  in  his  own  person,  a  more  dazzling 
specimen  of  the  theory  which  he  recommended.  If  Cicero 
came  more  nearly  than  any  person  ever  did  to  the  image  of 

*  The  Letters  of  Philip  Dormer  Stanhope,  Earl  of  Chesterfield  ;  in- 
cluding numerous  Letters  now  first  published  from  the  Original  Manu- 
scripts. Edited,  with  Notes,  by  Lord  Mahon.  London  :  Richard  Bent- 
ley.  1845.  4  vols.  8vo. 


256  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

the  perfect  orator  which  he  described,  Chesterfield  is  uni- 
versally considered  as  having  equally  sustained  his  own  idea 
of  the  perfect  gentleman.  Notwithstanding  his  character 
has  been  often  discussed,  and  not  long  ago  in  this  journal, 
we  will  not  omit  the  present  opportunity  of  noticing  it  once 
more.  Lord  Mahon  has  done  for  us  what  has  never  been 
done  before,  in  placing  the  whole  man  most  distinctly  in 
our  view.  The  applause  of  an  admiring  circle,  and  the  cen- 
sure of  malignant  enemies,  of  his  own  day,  will  now  pass  for 
exactly  what  they  are  worth.  It  has  been  the  lot  of  few  dis- 
tinguished persons  to  be  stripped  so  bare  to  the  public  gaze 
aft.er  death.  And,  strangely  enough,  this  has  happened  to 
him,  of  all  others,  who  spent  his  life  in  labors  to  appear 
other  than  he  was.  The  man  who  systematically  wore  a 
mask  better  than  his  natural  face  while  on  earth,  has  been 
doomed  by  the  avarice  of  an  ungrateful  woman  to  hold  up  a 
glass  magnifying  every  deformity  of  his  mind  to  the  observa- 
tion of  the  most  distant  posterity.  Such  is  the  first  moral 
which  we  draw  from  the  history  of  the  Earl  of  Chesterfield. 
Let  us,  then,  proceed  to  look  at  this  figure  more  in  de- 
tail. Here  is  a  man  who,  without  being  ambitious  in  the 
highest  sense  of  that  term,  was  nevertheless  an  eager  aspir- 
ant for  distinction  in  more  than  one  field  of  exertion.  He 
aimed  to  be  a  statesman,  an  orator,  a  scholar,  and  a  gentle- 
man— in  brief,  a  sort  of  model  man,  yet  "  hackneyed  in  the 
ways  of  the  world."  And  it  must  be  conceded,  too,  that  if 
his  success  was  not  entirely  equal  to  his  own  expectations, 
it  was  nevertheless  very  far  beyond  the  average  of  that  of 
men  in  general.  The  reasons  why  it  was  not  greater  we 
intend  to  try  to  explain  in  the  present  article.  If  we  can 
make  it  appear  that  they  come  directly  from  the  theory  of 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  257 

conduct  which  he  maintained,  we  hope  to  be  not  without 
success  in  checking  the  tendency  of  some  minds  to  be  mis- 
led by  his  example.  If  we  can  show  by  the  example  of 
Lord  Chesterfield  himself  that  the  foundation  upon  which 
he  built  his  own  edifice,  which  he  also  earnestly  recommends 
to  be  adopted  by  his  son,  is,  in  itself,  so  insecure  as  not  to 
be  worthy  of  reliance ;  and,  still  more,  if  we  can  prove  that 
it  creates  the  difficulties  which  beyond  a  certain  point  ren- 
der further  progress  next  to  impracticable,  it  may  be  that 
we  shall  turn  the  direction  of  some  aspirants  for  distinction 
to  other  and  better  sources  of  knowledge  of  the  paths  of 
life, 

To  illustrate  our  idea,  it  will  be  necessary  to  assume  that 
the  lessons  which  he  taught  in  his  letters  to  his  son  were 
those  upon  which  he  practiced  himself.  That  this  is  not  in 
itself  an  unreasonable  inference  can  be  shown  by  many  pas- 
sages in  which  the  writer  refers  directly  to  his  own  case  as 
a  practical  illustration  of  the  value  of  his  maxims.  The 
spirit  of  his  teaching  is  all  conveyed  in  this  tone  :  "  See 
what  I  did.  Go  thou  and  do  likewise ;  better,  if  possible — 
but  still  after  my  model."  In  this  there  was  no  undue  vanity 
or  self-conceit.  Lord  Chesterfield  knew  that  he  possessed 
qualities  which  entitled  him  to  claim  a  good  share  of  worldly 
applause,  and  he  also  knew  the  labor  it  had  cost  him  to 
make  all  those  qualities  as  effective  as  possible.  He  had  a 
right,  from  what  he  found  he  could  do,  to  infer  that  others 
could  succeed  even  better  than  he,  if  they  would  only  take 
the  pains  which  he  had  done.  No  other  course  than  his 
seems  to  have  occurred  to  his  mind  as  likely  to  insure  suc- 
cess. It  is,  then,  proper  to  review  his  life  by  the  light  which 
he  himself  has  furnished,  and  to  trace  the  causes  of  his  suc- 


258  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

cess  or  failure,  so  far  as  he  may  be  judged  to  have  succeeded 
or  failed,  to  the  rules  which  he  lays  down. 

The  first  point  to  which  we  direct  our  attention  is,  to 
ascertain  the  leading  motive  to  exertion  that  is  held  out  by 
his  lordship.  We  find  but  one,  and  that  is  worldly  success  ; 
in  other  words,  the  exaltation  of  the  individual  himself  to 
rank,  and  power,  and  consideration  among  his  fellow  men. 
This  is  the  great  end,  to  compass  which  merits  that  every 
faculty  should  be  taxed  to  its  utmost.  In  order  to  reach 
this,  knowledge  is  to  be  acquired,  the  common  every-day 
morality  of  men  is  to  be  mastered,  the  manners  are  to  be 
molded,  and  even  religion  is  to  be  respected.  To  reach 
this,  we  are  to  make  ourselves  all  things  to  all  men,  that  we 
may  gain  them  all,  not  to  their  good,  but  to  ours.  Yet  in  this 
laborious  process  it  does  not  seem  absolutely  required,  how- 
ever desirable  it  might  be,  that  we  should  really  be  exactly 
what  we  appear.  It  is  sufficient  if  we  can  succeed  in  making 
everybody  else  believe  that  we  are  what  we  profess.  Lord 
Chesterfield  expressly  tells  his  son  that  his  great  object,  when 
setting  out  in  life,  was  "  to  make  every  man  he  met  like  him, 
and  every  woman  love  him."  He  says,  moreover,  that  "  he 
often  succeeded;  but  why?  By  taking  great  pains."  Yet 
he  did  not  mean  to  be  understood  that  these  pains  were 
taken  in  an  endeavor  really  to  merit  such  affection,  but 
rather  only  to  appear  to  merit  it,  which  would  answer  the 
purpose  quite  as  well,  and  be  more  easily  compassed.  To 
cultivate  very  high  qualities  of  character  must  be  the  labor 
of  a  life,  among  even  the  best  natural  temperaments.  To 
acquire  the  power  of  assuming  the  appearance  of  them  for 
the  moment  may  be  gained  in  much  less  time  "  by  taking 
proper  pains."  Although  Lord  Chesterfield  doubtless  would 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 


259 


have  valued  the  genuine  coin  far  the  most,  he  was  yet  too 
"  hackneyed  in  the  ways  of  life  "  to  require  more  than  that 
the  counterfeit  should  escape  detection.  According  to  his 
theory,  considered  apart  from  his  own  practice,  it  is  not 
essential,  provided  only  that  a  man  appear  learned  and 
wise,  whether  he  really  be  so  or  not ;  nor  does  it  matter  that 
he  should  be  amiable,  or  just,  or  even  honest,  if  he  can  suc- 
ceed in  concealing  the  evidence  of  his  ill-temper,  or  his  in- 
justice, or  his  fraud,  from  the  condemnation  of  the  public. 
His  morality  thus  proves  to  be  but  skin-deep,  in  fact,  though 
he  occasionally  claims  to  show  much  more.  We  see  it  in 
the  summary  manner  in  which  he  dispatches  his  orders 
about  all  the  more  serious  parts  of  education.  It  always 
sounds  as  if  he  spoke  thus :  "  As  to  religion  and  morals,  a 
respect  for  the  church  catechism  and  the  ten  commandments, 
you,  my  son,  must  take  it  for  granted  that  I  advise  all  that, 
even  though  I  never  mention  them,  since  my  whole  strength 
I  reserve  to  enjoin  upon  you,  over  and  over  again,  line  upon 
line,  and  precept  upon  precept,  the  necessity  of  always 
keeping  in  mind  '  the  graces.'  " 

We  understand,  then,  by  the  cultivation  of  "  the  graces," 
the  adoption  of  a  code  of  morals  which  makes  the  approba- 
tion of  others  the  standard  of  all  merit,  and  the  advance- 
ment of  one's  self  the  end  of  all  exertion.  A  man  is  to  learn 
to  treat  his  neighbor  well,  not  because  it  is  due  to  him  that 
he  should,  but  rather  because  he  may  himself  lose  something 
by  it  if  he  do  not.  His  civility  is  the  result  of  a  calculation 
of  profit  and  loss  in  his  own  mind,  by  which  he  has  arrived 
at  the  conclusion,  that  the  balance  will  show  a  net  gain  to 
himself  in  not  being  rude.  Neither  is  it  essential  that  this 
civility  to  others  should  be  carried  one  step  further  than  is 


260  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

needful-to  secure  the  proposed  object.  It  has  its  ascending 
scale,  which  is  regulated  by  the  estimation  in  which  per- 
sons are  respectively  held,  and  consequently  by  the  power 
they  can  wield,  either  to  advance  or  retard  him.  To  the 
pauper,  for  example,  it  may  .be  allowed  to  behave  as  roughly 
as  possible,  provided  nobody  is  looking  on,  because  he 
can  not  resent  it,  and,  even  if  he  does,  his  resentment  will 
avail  nothing :  while  to  the  prince  no  reasonable  amount  of 
exertion  is  to  be  spared  to  manifest  a  degree  of  devotion 
that  may  earn  a  substantial  recompense  from  his  good-will. 
All  intermediate  positions  have  their  share  of  regard  regu- 
lated, as  the  custom-house  would  say,  by  a  tariff  ad  valorem. 
Neither  is  indulgence  in  all  the  vices  forbidden  by  the  deca- 
logue denied  by  this  system,  provided  they  be  not  practiced 
in  a  manner  offensive  to  those  who  are  able  to  compel  the 
payment  of  penalty  for  so  doing.  The  fault  of  every  action 
will  be  estimated,  not  by  the  nature  of  the  act  itself,  so  much 
as  by  the  want  of  skill  manifested  in  concealing  it  from  the 
public.  To  be  maladroit,  as  it  is  fatal  to  one's  reputation 
becomes  here,  as  it  was  in  Sparta,  the  highest  crime. 

Now,  in  making  such  an  exposition  of  the  Chesterfield 
code,  we  do  not  pretend  to  the  merit  of  saying  anything 
new ;  much  less  do  we  mean  to  find  fault  with  it  at  this  time. 
From  the  day  when  it  was  first  published,  down  to  the  pref- 
ace of  Lord  Mahon  to  this  edition,  the  objection  has  been 
perpetually  repeated  that  it  converts  hypocrisy  into  the  first 
of  virtues.  How  that  may  be  is  aside  from  the  present  pur- 
pose. The  difficulties  attending  the  system,  as  one  of  mor- 
als, all  lie  upon  the  surface.  We  propose  to  go  a  little  around 
them,  and  maintain  that  even  for  the  great  end  proposed  to 
be  gained  by  the  adoption  of  it,  worldly  success,  it  is  alto- 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  26i 

gether  unsafe,  and  not  to  be  relied  on.  Even  in  the  hands 
of  a  master  like  Chesterfield  himself,  the  instruments  it  fur- 
nishes are  not  always  sure  in  their  operation.  Sometimes 
they  even  turn  injuriously  upon  him  who  uses  them  most 
skillfully ;  and  when  otherwise  used,  as  they  are  more  than 
half  the  time  by  those  who  undertake  to  practice  with  them, 
they  are  apt  to  be  attended  with  an  effect  upon  their  own 
prospects  of  advancement  as  well  as  of  happiness  the  very 
opposite  of  what  they  had  so  sanguinely  anticipated.  If  we 
are  in  any  way  successful  in  showing  this  to  be  the  case  in 
the  history  of  his  lordship  himself,  as  it  is  now  given  us  from 
his  own  lips,  our  main  purpose  will  be  fully  answered. 

Philip  Dormer  Stanhope  does  not  seem  ever  to  have  been 
a  young  man.  His  letters  written  from  Cambridge  betray 
the  acuteness  and  discretion  of  an  old  head.  Those  ad- 
dressed to  his  tutor,  before  he  was  of  age,  show  that  the 
artificial  bent  of  his  nature  was  even  then  already  fixed.  He 
devoted  himself  to  his  studies,  not  because  he  had  any  pas- 
sion for  knowledge,  or  any  adequate  idea  of  its  uses,  but  be- 
cause he  aspired  to  shine  by  the  possession  of  it.  The 
consequence  was  early  pedantry,  which  he  got  rid  of  only 
by  changing  the  object  of  his  aspirations.  He  left  off  quot- 
ing the  classics,  which  he  never  either  loved  or  understood, 
as  soon  as  he  found  himself  at  the  shrine  of  fashion  in  its 
citadel  of  Paris.  The  faults  of  the  French  character  then 
became  the  objects  of  his  new  admiration,  and  so  much  did 
they  find  that  was  akin  to  them  in  his  own  nature,  that  this 
attachment  went  with  him  to  his  grave.  He  studied  to  make 
himself  a  Frenchman  with  as  much  deliberate  earnestness  as 
he  had  done  at  college  to  become  a  pedant ;  and  his  later 
labors  were  crowned  with  even  greater  success  than  the 


262  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

former  ones.  For  the  fact  that  he  imitated  the  French  so 
exactly  in  his  outward  manners  as  to  be  often  taken  by  them- 
selves for  one  of  them,  we  must  rely  upon  his  affirmation 
alone.  But  there  is  before  us  another  indirect  proof  of  his 
proficiency,  which  is  more  convincing  even  than  this.  We 
see  under  his  own  hand  how  he  had  learned  to  overwhelm 
his  tutor,  M.  Joubeau,  with  professions  of  attachment  which 
he  did  not  feel,  and  to  promise  him  many  future  letters  in 
that  which  he  meant  to  be  his  last. 

Let  us,  however,  be  exactly  just  to  Lord  Chesterfield. 
He  was  not  insensible  to  the  merits  of  the  English  national 
character,  however  highly  he  might  value  that  of  the  French. 
His  favorite  idea,  and  that  which  he  endeavored  to  embody 
in  the  person  of  his  son,  was  the  union  of  what  he  deemed 
most  valuable  in  each  nation.  This  was  a  union  which  he 
admits  he  never  met  with  anywhere  in  life.  After  such  an 
admission,  the  idea  ought  to  have  occurred  to  him  that  there 
might  be,  and  probably  was,  an  incongruity  at  bottom,  which 
made  the  process  he  desired  to  effect  impracticable.  That 
he  did  not  succeed  with  his  son  is  well  known.  Probably 
the  best  example  ever  brought  forth  was  himself.  And  what 
was  the  result  ?  Certainly  not  such  as  to  make  it  expedient 
to  repeat  the  experiment.  Lord  Chesterfield  had  wit,  and 
knowledge,  and  good-breeding,  and  tact,  and  eloquence,  and 
spirit ;  and  yet,  with  the  possession  of  all  these  qualities,  he 
never  secured  a  hundredth  part  of  the  confidence  of  his  king 
or  country  that  was  enjoyed  by  rivals  who  possessed  few  of 
his  accomplishments  and  nothing  of  his  polish.  Sir  Robert 
Walpole  was  proverbially  coarse.  The  Duke  of  Newcastle 
was  almost  ridiculous.  Pitt  was  cold  and  haughty  and  over- 
bearing. Yet  they  successively  controlled  the  government, 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  26? 

\j 

while  he  wasted  his  time  and  pains  in  futile  efforts  to  obtain 
it ;  and  even  at  last,  when  it  appeared  within  his  reach,  the 
event  only  proved  to  him  most  convincingly  that  it  was  his 
fate  to  clutch  at  the  mere  shadow  of  power  while  the  reality 
rested  in  other  hands. 

National  character  is  the  result  of  so  many  concurring 
causes,  that  it  is  difficult  precisely  to  define  how  it  grows  up. 
The  circumstances  which  immediately  surround  a  people 
demand  of  the  flexibility  of  the  human  species  a  certain  de- 
gree of  adaptation  to  them.  To  the  French  people,  who  are 
constitutionally  ardent,  impulsive,  and  susceptible  of  rapid 
emotions,  an  artificial  system  of  manners  is  not  without  its 
advantages.  With  them,  strong  habits  of  restraint  are  essen- 
tial to  the  peace  and  safety,  not  to  say  the  happiness  of  so- 
ciety. If  we  knew  that  a  passionate  individual  had  forced 
himself  to  cultivate  the  minor  graces  of  life  because  he  be- 
lieved that  otherwise  he  might  be  liable,  occasionally,  to  fall 
into  extremes  of  treatment  of  those  around  him  which  would 
breed  nothing  but  quarrels,  and  perhaps  bloodshed,  we 
should  be  apt  to  praise  his  resolution,  even  though  sensible 
that  an  evil  consequence  might  follow  in  his  learning  to  be 
insincere.  Such  insincerity  may  be  palliated  so  long  as  it  is 
associated  with  the  notion  of  regulating  human  passion.  But 
when  it  becomes  allied  with  coldness,  when  we  know  that 
the  person  practicing  it  has  no  occasion  to  do  so  for  self- 
control,  and  that  he  resorts  to  it  solely  for  the  purpose  of 
concealing  the  icy  condition  of  his  own  heart,  making  it  ap- 
pear warmer  than  it  really  is  only  to  deceive  us,  the  vice 
becomes  in  the  highest  degree  revolting.  The  great  body 
of  the  English  race  are,  relatively  to  their  Continental  neigh- 
bors, sluggish  in  their  temperament,  and  moderate  in  their 


264  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

passions.  With  them,  therefore,  the  endeavor  to  cultivate 
the  graces  leads  to  a  vitiation  of  moral  principle  attended 
by  no  compensating  benefit.  If  there  be  one  thing  for  which 
that  race  is  distinguished  above  most  others,  it  is  for  its  con- 
tempt of  the  arts  of  dissimulation,  and  its  steady  admiration 
of  examples  of  truth  and  sincerity.  This  virtue  goes  a  good 
way  to  compensate  for  the  want  of  quick  susceptibility. 
And  so  long  as  the  experience  of  the  world  tends  to  show 
the  impracticability  of  uniting  these  qualities  of  the  respec- 
tive nations,  it  will  be  better  for  each  not  to  run  the  risk  of 
spoiling  what  it  has,  in  the  vain  quest  of  what  it  has  not. 

We  have  said  that,  at  the  age  of  twenty,  the  young  Lord 
Stanhope  had  already  acquired  the  peculiar  character  which 
ever  after  marked  him  when  he  was  known  as  Lord  Ches- 
terfield. His  leading  trait  was  then,  as  afterward,  want  of 
a  heart.  From  this  source  flowed  his  merits  as  well  as  his 
fauks.  Hence  sprang  the  coolness  of  his  judgment  and  the 
absence  of  generosity.  Hence  arose  his  aversion  to  intem- 
perance in  drinking — the  vice  of  warm  and  convivial  na- 
tures— and  his  passion  for  gaming,  the  tendency  of  the  selfish 
and  the  cold.  The  same  cause  that  polished  his  exterior 
effectually  completed  the  perversion  of  the  springs  of  action 
that  were  working  within.  It  made  him  brilliant  but  super- 
ficial, extravagant  and  yet  not  generous,  captivating  and  yet 
treacherous.  It  secured  him  hosts  of  admirers  but  very 
few  supporters — crowds  of  flatterers  and  no  devoted  friends. 

It  has  not  often  happened  to  a  young  man  to  start  in  life 
under  fairer  auspices  than  his  lordship.  Descended  from 
some  of  the  best  families  in  the  United  Kingdom,  heir  ap- 
parent to  an  earldom,  he  came  forward  at  the  very  moment 
when  the  crown  had  devolved  upon  the  Brunswick  family 


THE  EARL  OF  CHESTERFIELD.  265 

and  George  I.  was  manifesting  his  gratitude  to  General 
Stanhope,  the  kinsman  of  the  young  nobleman,  for  his  emi- 
nent services  in  bringing  about  that  result,  by  placing  him  at 
the  head  of  the  government.  Before  the  youth  was  of  age 
the  doors  of  the  House  of  Commons  were  opened  to  receive 
him,  and  a  place  in  the  household  of  the  heir  to  the  throne 
was  secured  for  his  acceptance.  The  road  to  power  seemed 
invitingly  open  to  him.  That  which  others  toil  through 
long  years  of  pain  to  acquire,  and  which  they  gain,  if  at  all, 
at  so  late  a  period  in  life  as  to  make  it  scarce  worth  the 
struggle  it  has  cost,  appeared  almost  to  throw  itself  into  his 
hands  at  once.  Little  remained  for  him  to  do  but  to  con- 
firm the  favorable  impressions  toward  himself  which  his  first 
address  might  create,  and  to  convince  the  public,  through 
his  position  in  Parliament,  of  the  extent  of  his  capacity  to 
be  at  the  head  of  affairs  should  the  time  arrive  that  might 
require  his  services.  Surely,  if  the  cultivation  of  the  graces, 
the  elegance  of  high  breeding,  the  fascination  of  external 
manner,  were  ever  likely  to  avail  for  the  benefit  of  their 
possessor  so  much  as  his  lordship  would  have  had  his  son 
believe  that  they  do,  no  opportunity  could  be  more  favorable 
to  prove  their  efficacy  than  this  which  had  arisen  in  his  own 
case. 

Now  let  us  observe  what  the  result  was.  Young  Lord 
Stanhope  rushed  into  the  House  of  Commons,  eager  to  exer- 
cise his  carefully  trained  powers  in  the  arena  of  debate,  and 
to  mark  his  devotion  to  the  house  of  Hanover  by  support- 
ing the  strong  measures  devised  in  order  to  establish  it  upon 
the  throne.  Here,  however,  he  soon  discovered  that  the 
graces,  a  finished  manner  of  delivery,  and  polished  diction 
were  not  all  that  was  essential  to  secure  the  affection  of  a 


266  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

popular  body.  While  the  gladiator  was  studying  his  atti- 
tudes, a  much  inferior  combatant  was  at  work  effectually  to 
shake  his  standing  before  the  House.  There  was  a  member 
of  the  party  to  which  Chesterfield  was  opposed  who  was 
gifted  in  a  high  degree  with  the  dangerous  power  of  mim- 
icry. The  oratory  of  his  lordship,  depending  in  a  great 
degree  upon  manner,  if  we  may  judge  of  it  by  his  own  esti- 
mate of  its  power,  was  exactly  of  that  kind  which  lies  most 
open  to  imitation  and  caricature.  While,  therefore,  we  are 
nowhere  informed  that  the  faculty  of  the  mimic  had  any  ef- 
fect whatsoever  in  weakening  the  almost  despotic  power  of 
Walpole,  of  William  Pitt,  or  Pulteney,  we  learn  on  the  other 
hand  that  it  almost  sealed  the  lips  of  the  courtly  Stanhope. 
His  graces  only  availed  to  expose  him  to  the  withering  shaft 
of  ridicule,  while  they  furnished  him  no  adequate  shield  for 
his  defense.  Had  he  remained  for  the  rest  of  his  life  in 
the  lower  branch,  he  would  in  all  probability  have  been 
set  down  among  dumb  legislators,  the  pedarii  of  whom  he  so 
often  and  so  contemptuously  speaks.  That  and  every  pop- 
ular body  requires  a  more  nervous  and  masculine  mode  of 
address  than  he  was  found  to  possess.  It  is  the  place  for 
earnest  contention,  and  not  for  the  make-believe  sports  of  a 
tournament.  Here,  then,  is  the  first  example  which  his  his- 
tory furnishes,  that  mere  manner  is  not  so  sure  of  success  as 
he  himself  appears  to  imagine.  For  even  when  fortified,  as 
in  his  case,  by  a  greater  coincidence  of  personal  qualities 
than  usually  falls  to  the  lot  of  public  speakers,  it  did  not 
enable  him  to  overcome  the  most  trivial  obstacle  that  for- 
tune could  well  throw  in  his  path. 

Neither  was  the  success  of  the  young  lord  greater  from 
the  opportunities  of  private  access  which  he  enjoyed  to  the 


THE  EARL  OF  CHESTERFIELD.  267 

members  of  the  royal  family,  than  from  his  exertions  on  a 
more  public  field.  The  first  event  that  happened  to  mar  his 
prospects,  one  indeed  for  which  no  address  can  be  in  any 
manner  prepared,  was  a  quarrel  between  the  King,  George  I., 
and  the  Prince  of  Wales,  in  whose  immediate  service  Lord 
Stanhope  had  been  placed.  This  quarrel  grew  out  of  the 
circumstance  that  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  had  been  ap- 
pointed to  stand  godfather  to  the  Prince's  child — which  the 
Prince  thought  proper  to  resent.  The  King,  on  his  part, 
became  violently  offended.  From  words  he  proceeded  to 
acts ;  he  banished  his  son  from  the  palace,  forbade  any 
public  honors  to  be  paid  to  his  rank,  and  separated  him 
from  his  children.  Neither  was  this  all.  The  friends  of 
the  son  were  compelled  to  make  their  election  between  ad- 
herence to  him  and  a  reception  at  St.  James's.  As  one  of 
his  immediate  household,  Lord  Stanhope  was  thus  driven  to 
take  a  side.  On  the  one  hand  was  the  power  in  the  ascend- 
ant, to  offend  which  would  necessarily  cut  off  all  prospect 
of  present  promotion.  On  the  other  was  the  rising  sun,  to 
neglect  which  might  lead  in  no  very  long  time  to  conse- 
quences far  more  serious  and  lasting.  Disagreeable  as  the 
choice  might  be,  his  lordship  decided  on  the  right  side. 
Whatever  may  have  been  his  motives  for  so  doing,  and  his 
own  theory  forbids  us  from  believing  that  they  were  disin- 
terested, he  determined  to  hold  to  the  heir  apparent,  in 
spite  of  every  solicitation  to  the  contrary.  It  is  even  said 
that,  in  order  to  detach  him  from  his  connection,  an  offer 
was  made  to  create  his  father  a  duke,  and  that  by  rejecting 
it  he  not  only  cut  himself  off  for  the  time  from  office,  but 
offended  his  parent,  who  would  have  been  gratified  by  the 
title.  The  merit  of  this  self-denial  must  be  estimated,  ac- 


268  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

cording  to  Chesterfield's  philosophy,  by  the  age  of  the  sov- 
ereign, which  was  then  only  fifty-seven.  And,  as  his  consti- 
tution gave  no  signs  of  decline,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
the  sacrifice  which  he  made  was  one  of  no  ordinary  charac- 
ter. And,  if  done  generously  and  without  qualification,  it 
should,  upon  every  principle  of  gratitude,  have  secured  the 
lasting  attachment  of  the  person  in  whose  behalf  it  was 
made. 

Such  was  not,  however,  the  result.  Lord  Stanhope  be- 
came Earl  of  Chesterfield  not  very  long  before  the  Prince  of 
Wales  succeeded  to  his  father's  throne.  A  new  field  seemed 
to  open  before  him,  and  one  in  which  he  was  much  better 
fitted  to  succeed.  There  was  no  malicious  mocker  in  the 
House  of  Lords  to  mar  the  effect  of  his  elegant  playfulness. 
Here  was  no  sharp  encounter  of  masculine  minds  to  be  ap- 
prehended. Their  lordships  rather  courted  that  state  of 
repose  which  delights  in  gentle,  as  it  is  unfriendly  to  violent, 
emotions.  Lord  Chesterfield  commanded  their  attention 
not  merely  by  his  positive  qualifications  to  please,  but  by 
his  relative  superiority  over  most  of  them.  The  oratorical 
ability  of  that  body  has  always  mainly  depended  upon  those 
newly  created  peers  who  have  received  their  titles  as  a  re- 
ward for  service  rendered  as  commoners.  The  very  novelty 
of  an  eloquent  lord  whose  family  had  been  ennobled  for 
more  than  two  centuries  was  a  recommendation.  Chester- 
field knew  how  to  avail  himself  of  this  advantage.  He,  who 
as  a  member  of  the  lower  House  had  made  little  impression 
as  a  speaker,  was  listened  to  as  a  peer  with  the  most  pro- 
found attention  and  delight.  Yet,  although  his  altered  po- 
sition in  this  regard  had  thus  materially  contributed  to 
enlarge  the  sphere  of  his  influence,  the  accession  of  George 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  269 

II.  was  not  attended  with  the  results  which  perhaps  he  had 
a  right  to  expect.  The  reasons  for  this  must  in  a  degree  be 
left  to  conjecture.  So  far  from  there  being  any  manifesta- 
tion of  gratitude  for  past  sacrifices,  on  the  part  of  the  sov- 
ereign, it  is  very  certain  that  Chesterfield  was  a  marked 
object  of  dislike,  while  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  the  very 
person  about  whom  the  original  quarrel  arose,  managed  to 
establish  himself  as  a  favorite  during  the  king's  life.  And 
here  again  we  find  an  opportunity  to  observe  the  fallacy  of 
the  theory  that  a  cultivation  of  external  graces  and  an  elab- 
orate effort  to  please  everybody  is  the  surest  road  to  worldly 
elevation.  His  lordship  had  probably  not  been  wanting  in 
his  efforts  to  conciliate  the  good  will  of  those  whom  he  con- 
sidered most  likely  to  produce  an  effect  upon  his  success ; 
but  he  doubtless  overshot  his  mark,  as  worldly  people  are 
apt  to  do.  One  of  his  maxims,  which  he  most  earnestly 
presses  upon  his  son,  is  that  every  person,  whatever  may  be 
his  situation  about  a  court,  may  have  some  means  of  influ- 
ence upon  one's  fortune,  and  is  therefore  worth  pleasing : 

Merit  at  courts,  without  favor  (he  says),  will  do  little  or  no- 
thing ;  favor  without  merit  will  do  a  good  deal ;  but  favor  and  merit 
together  will  do  everything.  Favor  at  courts  depends  upon  so  many, 
such  trifling,  such  unexpected  and  unforeseen  events,  that  a  good 
courtier  must  attend  to  every  circumstance,  however  little,  that  either 
does  or  can  happen ;  he  must  have  no  absences,  no  distractions  ;  he 
must  not  say,  "I  did  not  mind  it!  who  would  have  thought  it?" 
He  ought  both  to  have  minded  and  to  have  thought  it.  A  chamber- 
maid has  sometimes  caused  revolutions  in  courts,  which  have  pro- 
duced others  in  kingdoms.  Were  I  to  make  my  way  to  favor  in  a 
court,  I  would  neither  willfully  nor  by  negligence  give  a  dog  or  a  cat 
there  reason  to  dislike  me  (vol.  ii.,  p.  267). 


270 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 


Notwithstanding  all  this,  the  converse  of  the  proposition 
is  sometimes  true — that  there  is  quite  as  much  risk  of  injury 
from  a  mistake  in  paying  court  to  the  wrong  persons  as  in 
not  paying  it  to  the  right  ones.  Without  having  any  posi- 
tive authority  for  affirming  it  to  be  true,  we  are  yet  strongly 
inclined  to  the  opinion  that  this  was  the  rock  upon  which 
Chesterfield  found  himself  wrecked.  It  was  in  his  character 
to  suppose  that  the  mistress  must  have  some  influence  over 
the  King's  actions.  Such  is  the  lesson  uniformly  taught  in 
the  experience  of  the  French  monarchy,  a  history  that  had 
not  been  lost  upon  the  observing  nobleman.  The  idea  that 
the  mistress  should  have  none  and  the  Queen  all  power  was 
an  anomaly  reserved  for  the  age  of  George  II.  It  is  very 
certain  that  Chesterfield  did  take  pains  always  to  maintain  a 
friendly  and  intimate  relation  with  Lady  Suffolk,  even  before 
the  accession  of  the  King.  And  his  own  sketch  of  that  lady 
long  afterward  written,  while  it  admits  her  want  of  influence, 
betrays  the  fact  that  he  was  himself  privy  to  some  of  the  in- 
stances in  which  her  endeavors  to  exercise  it  had  proved 
vain.  Is  it,  then,  unreasonable  to  infer,  from  our  general 
knowledge  of  the  man  and  the  ordinary  springs  of  his  ac- 
tion, that  he  bought  his  own  experience  of  its  extent  ?  Sir 
Robert  Walpole  was  a  coarse  and  ill-bred,  person  in  com- 
parison, and  yet  he  gained  a  complete  victory  over  his  rival, 
by  neglecting  the  wrong  and  going  at  once  to  the  right 
source  of  power.  When  the  question  was  in  agitation,  at 
the  commencement  of  the  reign,  what  the  provision  in  the 
civil  list  for  the  Queen  should  be,  and  Sir  Spencer  Compton, 
the  locum  tenens  of  first  minister,  proposed  only  fifty  thousand 
pounds,  it  is  said  that  Walpole  came  forward  with  an  offer 
to  double  it.  From  that  moment  to  the  end  of  Caroline's 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 


271 


life,  vehement  as  was  the  opposition  against  him,  no  person, 
and  least  of  all  Chesterfield,  was  able  to  shake  this  minister 
in  the  possession  of  the  royal  confidence.  Such  was  the  re- 
sult of  the  second  effort  to  curry  favor  by  the  cultivation  of 
superior  graces. 

Still  another  illustration  of  the  insecurity  of  the  Chester- 
field theory  to  obtain  the  end  proposed  is  to  be  found  in 
different  portions  of  his  history  relating  to  this  same  period. 
George  I.  came  over  from  Hanover  without  his  wife,  and 
with  two  or  three  mistresses,  a  sketch  of  whom  is  now 
printed  for  the  first  time  among  the,  characters  which  his 
lordship  has  admirably  described.  Of  these  mistresses  the 
most  noted  was  the  Duchess  of  Kendall,  with  whom  the 
monarch  is  described  as  passing  most  of  his  time,  and  who 
had  all  influence  over  him,  though  she  was  very  little  above 
an  idiot.  Such  is  Chesterfield's  own  account  of  a  person 
with  whom  he  nevertheless  preferred  above  all  others  to 
form  intimate  relations.  This  lady  brought  with  her  to  Eng- 
land a  young  female,  whom  she  chose  to  call  her  niece,  Melu- 
sina  de  Schulemburg,  but  whom  the  ill-natured  world,  and 
Chesterfield  doubtless  among  the  rest,  presumed  to  regard  as 
her  daughter  by  the  King.  Not  long  after  her  migration,  this 
young  lady  was  created  Countess  of  Walsingham  in  her  own 
right,  and  the  belief  was  general  that  she  would  prove  the 
heiress  of  a  large  property.  To  her,  then,  Lord  Chesterfield 
decided  to  pay  his  addresses,  and  solicit  her  hand  in  mar- 
riage. Was  his  motive  love  ?  Who  that  reads  any  of  his 
productions  could  ever  suspect  such  a  thing  ?  Was  it  pride, 
to  seek  to  connect  his  ancient  line  with  a  person  of  suspected 
legitimacy?  But  if  not  love  nor  pride,  what  could  have 
been  his  reason  but  the  hope  of  securing  the  ear  of  the  sov- 


272  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

ereign  through  the  person  described  by  him  as  almost  an 
idiot — namely,  the  Duchess  of  Kendall  ?  If  such  were  his 
object,  it  is  easy  to  comprehend  the  cause  of  the  feeble 
gratitude  manifested  by  George  II.  upon  his  accession. 
For  all  the  expectations  of  Melusina  de  Schulemburg,  which 
may  justly  be  supposed  to  have  also  weighed  in  the  balance 
with  Chesterfield,  were  unquestionably  regarded  by  the 
heir  apparent  as  likely  to  deduct  just  so  much  money  from 
his  own  legitimate  patrimony.  In  point  of  fact,  the  very 
first  act  of  the  new  sovereign  was  to  destroy  that  will  of  his 
father  upon  which  the  lady's  hopes  depended. 

Yet  so  little  did  these  courtly  arts  avail  in  favor  of  his 
lordship,  that  even  George  I.  refused  to  consent  to  this  mar- 
riage. The  reason  assigned  was  his  addiction  to  the  vice  of 
gaming,  a  vice  of  which  the  King  probably  foresaw  the  effect 
upon  any  provision  which  he  might  be  likely  to  make  for 
his  daughter.  Yet  Lord  Chesterfield  did  not  on  this  account 
relax  in  his  suit.  The  lady,  captivated  by  his  manners  and 
his  reputation,  persisted  in  adhering  to  the  object  of  her 
choice.  But  the  marriage  did  not  take  place  until  some 
time  after  the  death  of  the  old  King,  and  when,  as  a  con- 
nection, it  had  become  of  little  value.  In  the  interval, 
Chesterfield,  being  too  important  a  person  to  be  entirely 
neglected,  had  been  removed  from  the  stage  of  domestic 
contention  by  an  appointment  as  envoy  to  Holland,  receiv- 
ing soon  afterward  the  office  of  high  steward  of  the  King's 
household.  The  policy  of  Walpole  was  to  put  him  out  of 
sight  and  out  of  reach.  Chesterfield,  flattering  himself  upon 
his  possession  of  peculiar  qualifications  for  diplomacy,  eager- 
ly embraced  the  offer  thus  made,  and  acquitted  himself,  it 
must  be  admitted,  with  great  credit.  But  while  doing  so 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 


273 


he  let  slip  the  best  opportunity  he  ever  had  of  gaining  the 
supreme  power  at  home.  The  four  years  spent  by  him  in 
Holland  had  been  sedulously  employed  by  Walpole  to  con- 
firm his  master's  habits  of  dependence  upon  himself.  So 
fixed  had  they  become  that  a  desperate  push  made  by 
Townshend  to  unseat  him,  most  probably  with  the  conni- 
vance of  Chesterfield,  ended  only  in  the  disgrace  of  the  con- 
trivers. Townshend  resigned,  and  no  avenue  remained 
open  for  his  friend  but  to  join  in  opposition,  in  which, 
upon  his  return  home,  his  lordship  accordingly  embarked. 

It  can  not,  then,  be  denied  that  up  to  this  time  reliance 
upon  courtiers'  arts  had  been  productive  to  his  lordship  of 
little  beyond  successive  disappointments.  He  had  not  only 
failed  to  be  first,  but  he  had  seen  those  preferred  to  him 
who  were  weak  in  the  points  in  which  he  was  strong  and 
upon  which  he  most  relied.  In  despair,  he  now  for  the  first 
time  changed  his  course,  and  determined  to  trust  to  his 
general  abilities  more  than  to  his  address.  He  came  back 
from  Holland  only  to  throw  his  weight  into  the  scale  against 
a  favorite  measure,  and  one  severely  testing  the  popularity 
of  the  minister.  Sir  Robert  Walpole  was  not  a  man  to  for- 
give opposition,  so  he  punished  the  votes  of  Chesterfield 
and  of  his  connections  upon  the  excise  bill  by  immediate 
removal  from  their  posts.  From  this  date  until  the  minister 
fell,  an  open  and  active  war  was  carried  on  between  them. 
Chesterfield  proved  an  active  and  efficient  party  leader,  not 
merely  as  a  speaker  in  the  House  of  Lords,  but  as  a  writer 
and  the  contriver  of  political  combinations.  Most  particu- 
larly was  there  one  topic,  not  often  touched  in  vain  with 
the  British  public,  upon  which  he  lavished  his  ample  stores 

of  wit,  as  the  elder  Pitt  exhausted  upon  it  the  whole  artil- 
18 


274 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 


lery  of  invective.  This  topic  was  the  royal  predilection  for 
Hanover,  and  its  effects  upon  the  foreign  policy  of  the  min- 
ister. Ridicule  is,  of  all  modes  of  attack,  that  least  readily 
forgiven,  particularly  when  directed  by  an  inferior.  George 
II.,  incapable  of  wit  himself,  relished  it  little  in  others,  but 
least  of  all  in  Chesterfield.  Probably  no  man  in  the  king- 
dom was  so  cordially  hated  by  him  at  this  time;  and,  to 
crown  all,  the  marriage  long  talked  of  with  Melusina  de 
Schulemburg  was  just  then  decided  upon,  with  intimations 
that  not  even  royalty  itself  should  be  a  protection  against 
a  scrutinizing  inquiry  after  the  suppressed  will.  George  is 
said  to  have  prudently  compromised  that  matter  by  the  pay- 
ment of  twenty  thousand  pounds,  though  he  could  scarcely 
have  felt  much  softened  by  receiving  this  additional  evi- 
dence of  his  lordship's  goodwill.  It  betrayed  something 
of  the  cat  disposition,  after  long  courting  the  monarch,  thus 
to  threaten  him  with  his  claws.  Yet,  after  all,  we  very  much 
doubt  whether  the  hostility  did  not  advance  his  prospects 
much  faster  than  the  smooth  and  fair  seeming.  There  was 
manliness  about  it,  and  manliness  is  of  all  qualities  the  most 
indispensable  to  the  success  of  a  politician.  When  Sir  Rob- 
ert Walpole  was  at  last  hunted  down,  and  arrangements  were 
entered  into  for  the  purpose  of  reconstructing  an  adminis- 
tration out  of  the  heterogeneous  materials  which  had  only 
coalesced  to  effect  his  overthrow,  there  were  but  two  persons 
designated  by  the  monarch  as  utterly  inadmissible  to  his 
cabinet.  Those  two  were  William  Pitt  and  Lord  Chester- 
field. Yet  so  far  was  this  exclusion  from  proving  an  insur- 
mountable barrier  to  either,  that  the  former  actually  forced 
his  way  into  it  soon  after,  on  his  own  terms,  and  the  latter 
obtained,  by  his  steady  opposition,  a  degree  of  public  con- 


THE  EARL  OF  CHESTERFIELD.  275 

sideration  which  ultimately  secured  to  him  all  the  posts  of 
influence  which  he  ever  acquired. 

In  the  mean  time,  however,  the  political  career  of  his 
lordship,  if  it  kept  him  out  of  office,  was  not  without  some 
solid  compensation.  Sarah,  the  old  Duchess  of  Marlbor- 
ough,  had  not  ceased  to  take  an  active  interest  in  public 
affairs,  though  she  no  longer  wielded  the  power  of  her  ear- 
lier days.  Her  hatred  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole  had  been 
intense,  and  proportionate  was  her  gratitude  to  those  who 
distinguished  themselves  in  violent  opposition  to  him.  To 
William  Pitt  she  left  by  her  will  the  sum  of  ten  thousand 
pounds  sterling ;  while  to  Lord  Chesterfield  she  gave,  in  the 
same  instrument,  her  best  and  largest  diamond  ring,  twenty 
thousand  pounds  in  cash,  and  the  reversion  of  her  Wimble- 
don estate  in  failure  of  the  Spencer  family.  With  this  sup- 
port he  could  well  spare  two  years  more  in  opposition  to  the 
ill-assorted  combination,  which,  at  the  expense  of  the  popu- 
lar favor,  had  succeeded  to  Walpole's  power.  But  when  at 
last  this  fell  to  pieces,  and  a  new  arrangement  took  place, 
which  ended  in  what  was  then  called  "  the  broad  bottom," 
Lord  Chesterfield  owed  his  admission  into  it  to  almost  any 
cause  more  than  to  his  manners  and  address.  His  audience 
of  leave-taking  upon  going  the  second  time  to  Holland, 
granted  to  him  by  the  King  most  reluctantly,  was  only  one 
continued  insult.  It  seemed  as  if  the  occasion  presented 
itself  only  to  manifest  the  royal  resentment  of  the  peer's 
courtly  good  breeding.  Dr.  Maty  tells  us  that,  in  return  for 
the  elaborate  civility  and  offers  of  service  which  the  Earl 
made,  the  King  vouchsafed  no  other  answer  than  the  cold 
words,  "You  have  your  instructions,  my  lord." 

It  rarely  happens  to  politicians  to  be  perfectly  consistent. 


276  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

The  man  who  had  distinguished  himself  above  all  others  by 
his  opposition  to  that  system  of  foreign  alliances  which  drew 
the  country  into  Continental  wars,  was  now  to  reopen  his 
path  to  court  favor  by  his  efforts  "  to  bring  the  Dutch  roundly 
into  the  war  "  against  France.  He  succeeded  in  obtaining 
the  appointment  of  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  to  be  chief  of 
the  confederate  army,  which,  if  it  cost  his  country  the  defeat 
of  Fontenoy,  at  any  rate  earned  for  himself  some  title  to  his 
sovereign's  regard.  Yet,  even  after  his  return  from  his  mis- 
sion, and  before  he  went  over  to  assume  the  post  of  Lord 
Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  he  obtained  no  personal  interview 
with  the  King.  It  was  not  until  the  rebellion  of  1745  took 
place,  in  the  midst  of  which  George  found  himself  deserted 
by  his  ministers,  when  they  knew  he  must  submit  to  their 
dictation  of  their  own  terms,  as  he  could  not  do  without 
them,  that  his  lordship's  disapprobation  of  their  course  seems 
to  have  entirely  removed  the  burden  of  prejudice  that  had 
weighed  against  him  in  the  royal  mind.  His  services  had 
also  been  of  no  slight  value  in  keeping  Ireland  tranquil 
throughout  the  period  of  commotion  in  the  neighboring 
kingdom,  and  they  were  appreciated.  After  the  lapse  of  a 
few  months,  his  lordship  found  himself  at  last  in  the  King's 
closet,  at  the  King's  desire,  acting  in  the  capacity  of  ,one  of 
the  Secretaries  of  State.  The  avenue  to  power  seemed  once 
more  perfectly  open  to  him.  He  had  regained  it  by  services, 
and  not  by  his  address ;  yet  here  seemed  another  chance  by 
which  to  show  how  much  the  cultivation  of  insinuating  man- 
ners might  avail  to  fix  a  growing  impression.  Once  more 
did  his  lordship  resort  to  his  favorite  theory  to  sustain  him. 
The  Queen  was  no  longer  living  to  embarrass  him,  so  that 
he  felt  safe  in  devoting  his  attention  to  the  Countess  of  Yar- 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 


277 


mouth.  Yet,  little  as  he  spared  exertion,  the  expected  effect 
did  not  follow.  His  lordship  continued  in  office  long  enough 
to  be  convinced  that  he  was  overruled  in  everything,  down 
to  the  smallest  appointment,  by  his  colleague,  the  Duke  of 
Newcastle,  the  man  who  made  no  pretension  to  "  the  graces  " ; 
and  he  then  resigned.  The  result  of  this  last  experiment 
seems  to  have  been  so  decisive  with  him  that  he  never  at- 
tempted another.  At  the  early  age  of  fifty-four  he  retired 
from  public  life  in  disgust.  He  had  failed  to  be  first,  and 
he  wished  to  be  nothing  less.  And  in  his  want  of  success 
he  gave  to  posterity  the  most  convincing  proof  that,  after  all, 
polished  manners  can  not  be  relied  on  as  the  basis  of  a 
political  career,  even  though  they  be  connected  with  wit, 
eloquence,  and  knowledge  of  the  world. 

It  will  be  perceived  that,  even  upon  the  mere  utilitarian 
view  of  the  system  of  his  lordship,  we  maintain,  from  a  re- 
view of  his  own  history,  that  it  is  good  for  nothing.  We 
have  thrown  all  higher  arguments  out  of  consideration,  with 
much  the  same  coolness  that  he  does  himself.  Yet  we  would 
not  be  understood  to  affirm  that  refined  breeding  and  man- 
ners are  of  no  use  in  forwarding  a  man's  success ;  on  the 
contrary,  we  are  willing  to  believe  them  to  be  of  the  greatest 
use,  provided  only  there  be  a  heart  beneath.  This  little 
element  is  the  important  omission  in  his  lordship's  doctrine. 
He  seems  to  have  thought  it  unessential  what  the  inside 
might  be,  if  only  the  surface  was  sufficiently  polished  to 
conceal  it.  But,  by  a  compensating  process  of  nature,  men 
are  rendered  penetrating  in  proportion  to  the  efforts  made 
to  deceive  them.  The  suspicion  of  art  destroys  confidence 
in  professions.  Accordingly,  we  find  in  Lord  Chesterfield's 
case  that,  though  he  was  much  admired,  he  was  little  liked. 


278  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

In  his  assiduous  court  to  all  whom  he  believed  to  possess 
influence,  even  his  sagacity  could  not  save  him  from  betray- 
ing himself  to  the  most  inexperienced  eyes.  When  one  of 
the  pages  about  the  court  found  himself  more  than  once 
made  the  object  of  unusual  attention  by  the  Earl,  the  boy 
could  not  help,  at  last,  intimating  to  him  his  suspicion  that 
he  had  been  mistaken  for  M.  Louis,  a  youth  who  passed  for 
the  King's  son  by  Lady  Yarmouth.  His  suspicion  was  well 
founded,  and  the  misdirected  civility,  thus  known  to  be  hol- 
low, had  done  his  lordship  harm  instead  of  good.  Thus  we 
may  see  that  he  who  learns  to  be  civil  to  his  neighbor  solely 
for  the  use  he  may  make  of  his  friendship  can  never  become 
less  than  a  selfish  hypocrite,  whom  the  first  accident  that 
unmasks  him  will  render  contemptible. 

The  cultivation  of  a  general  spirit  of  benevolence  and 
charity  is  a  far  better  foundation  for  refinement  of  manners, 
because  it  imposes  no  task  of  insincerity.  It  is  rather  un- 
usual, we  know,  to  go  to  the  Scriptures  for  any  rule  of  fash- 
ionable life,  and  it  may  from  some  expose  us  to  the  charge 
of  writing  sermon-fashion ;  but  we  must  say  that  we  have 
never  understood  the  reason  why  it  was  necessary  to  go  fur- 
ther for  the  very  highest  theory  of  good  breeding  than  the 
broad  principle  laid  down  in  the  Holy  Book,  of  doing  unto 
others  as  you  would  they  should  do  unto  you.  To  be  sure, 
we  should  be  prevented  by  it  from  saying  flattering  false- 
hoods, merely  for  the  sake  of  deluding  our  neighbor's  vani- 
ty ;  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  we  might  be  allowed  the  pleasure 
of  using  the  truth  to  encourage  and  sustain  his  virtuous 
exertion.  How  much  may  be  done  in  this  way  few  people 
entirely  understand ;  or  how  many  young  hearts  yearn  for  a 
word  of  judicious  consolation,  under  the  inevitable  morti- 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  279 

fications  and  chill  produced  on  first  entering  into  the  con- 
flicts of  the  world.  To  them,  flattery  is  rank  poison,  while 
discriminating  praise  serves  as  the  breath  of  life.  But  there 
is  a  higher  reason  why  the  Christian  precept  is  a  more  per- 
fect rule  of  manners.  It  forbids  one  from  committing  wrong 
or  injustice  of  any  kind.  Had  his  lordship  followed  it  he 
would  have  been  saved  from  many  mortifications,  the  con- 
sequence of  such  injustice.  It  would  have  held  him  back 
from  the  cold-blooded  undertaking  of  seducing  a  weak  wo- 
man, merely  because  it  had  come  to  his  ears  that  she  ex- 
pressed a  very  natural  indignation  at  his  licentious  habits, 
and  from  the  equally  cruel  endeavor  to  train  up  the  offspring 
of  that  connection  to  a  place  it  was  impossible  for  him  to 
reach,  except  through  the  possession  of  a  character  and 
abilities  as  much  above  those  of  his  father  as  that  father's 
were  above  the  level  of  the  generality  of  men  of  his  time. 

Lord  Chesterfield  has  much  to  answer  for  on  many  ac- 
counts, but  most  especially  on  this, -that  he  formed  a  school, 
the  members  of  which,  while  committing  the  most  immoral 
acts,  have  kept  each  other  in  countenance  by  quoting  his 
specious  maxims  in  their  defense.  We  do  not  mean  to  say 
that  vicious  and  plausible  men  of  fashion  did  not  exist  be- 
fore his  day.  Such  persons  have  always  been  found  in 
every  cultivated  society.  What  we  do  mean  is,  that  he  laid 
down  a  code  of  rules  which  gained  immediate  currency  in 
that  society,  whereby  great  latitude  was,  almost  by  consent, 
conceded  to  certain  kinds  of  vice.  According  to  him,  it  is 
a  perfectly  gentlemanly  proceeding  to  corrupt  another  man's 
wife,  and  much  more  advisable,  as  it  saves  the  personal  risk 
attending  general  licentiousness.  Yet  no  consideration  is 
given  to  the  inevitable  effects  that  follow  upon  the  happiness 


28o  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD, 

of  families  and  the  peace  of  society  itself.  And  generally  it 
is,  according  to  him,  perfectly  allowable  to  disregard  the 
rights  or  feelings  of  the  rest  of  the  world,  provided  appear- 
ances be  preserved,  and  a  smile  be  kept  upon  the  face  which 
meditates  a  wrong. 

Let  us  now  consider  one  of  the  cases  in  which,  as  it  ap- 
pears to  us,  his  lordship  fully  exemplified  the  tendencies  of 
his  nature.  He  had  married  a  woman  whom  he  did  not 
love,  and  he  was  not  so  fortunate  as  to  have  children  by  her, 
which  might  have  awakened  some  interest  in  her  welfare. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  happened  that  he  had  a  son  by  one 
Mrs.  Du  Bouchet,  a  Frenchwoman,  already  alluded  to,  and 
this  son  he  determined  to  make  the  subject  of  a  grand  ex- 
periment. His  own  theory  was  that  differences  of  character 
depend  more  upon  education  than  upon  nature ;  so  he  re- 
solved to  spare  no  pains  in  making  at  all  hazards  this  unfor- 
tunate subject  fill  up  his  beau-icttal  of  a  man.  In  order  to 
do  this,  he  willfully  overlooked  the  enormous  difficulty  be- 
fore him,  at  the  very  outset,  of  making  an  illegitimate  son 
play  a  first  part  in  the  history  of  such  a  country  as  Great 
Britain.  Nor  was  this  all.  He  neglected  to  consider  the 
extent  of  the  trial  he  was  preparing  for  the  poor  young  man. 
Who  shall  say  how  much  of  the  awkwardness  and  bashful- 
ness  for  which  his  father  perpetually  reproached  him  might 
have  been  owing  to  an  impression,  early  received,  of  in- 
equality with  those  immediately  around  him?  Who  that 
knows  boys,  and  especially  English  boys,  can  fail  to  under- 
stand how  soon  the  smallest  difference  of  condition  makes 
itself  felt  among  them,  to  the  depression  of  those  who  are 
suspected  of  laboring  under  a  disadvantage  ?  How  Mr. 
Stanhope  was  made  to  feel  this  in  later  life,  both  at  Brussels 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  28i 

and  in  the  fruitless  effort  to  get  the  appointment  of  minister 
at  Venice,  we  see  and  know,  from  the  letters  before  us.  It 
may  be  very  well  for  his  lordship  to  glide  over  such  mortifi- 
cations lightly,  and  call  them  inevitable  evils,  to  be  remedied 
only  by  greater  exertions;  but  his  duty  was  not  the  less 
plain  to  reflect,  before  he  forced  a  young  man  into  such  a 
situation,  how  apt  it  is  to  break  down  the  spirit  and  disable 
it  from  ever  entering  upon  the  exertions  required.  How 
few  men  in  Great  Britain  have  made  head  against  such  an 
early  disadvantage!  Is  it,  then,  to  be  wondered  at,  that 
Stanhope,  who  had  not  elements  of  character  strong  enough 
to  succeed,  even  without  it,  should  have  failed  so  entirely 
while  under  its  influence?  The  fault  surely  was  not  so 
much  in  him  as  in  his  father's  heartless  error  of  judgment  in 
educating  him.  Neither  is  this  all  the  penalty  which  the 
poor  young  man  has  been  compelled  to  pay.  Not  only  has 
the  record  of  his  failure  to  be  a  great  man  been  made  up 
against  him  on  the  book  of  history,  but  his  memory  is  des- 
tined for  ever  to  be  associated  with  the  evidence  of  the 
labor  and  pains  expended  in  vain  upon  him  to  produce  any 
extraordinary  result  whatever.  As  a  matter  of  common  jus- 
tice, the  readers  of  the  present  collection  should  have  seen 
a  few  of  Mr.  Stanhope's  own  letters,  at  least  sufficient  to 
give  them  an  opportunity  to  judge  him  fairly.  As  it  is  now, 
his  reputation  fluctuates  between  those  who  call  him  a  stupid 
booby  and  those  who  describe  him  as  a  dull  pedant,  while 
still  a  third  party  do  not  let  him  off  even  so  easily  as  that. 
Yet,  admitting  all  that  may  be  said  against  him,  who  is  most 
in  fault  for  it  ?  Is  it  to  be  supposed  that  the  young  man 
was  worse,  in  any  respect,  than  ten  thousand  people  of  his 
own  or  of  any  age,  who  live  out  their  appointed  number  of 


282  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

days,  respectable  citizens,  and  who  go  to  their  graves  deeply 
regretted  by  the  usual  circle  of  afflicted  relations  ?  Why  is 
it,  then,  that  he  should  be  singled  out  for  everlasting  infamy, 
as  a  dunce  and  a  cub,  or  as 

"  Base,  degenerate,  meanly  bad," 

because  his  father  chose  in  his  person  to  immortalize  his 
own  crime,  and  his  unfeeling  ambition  of  making  an  experi- 
ment, against  the  success  of  which  the  chances  were  as  a 
thousand  to  one  ? 

A  common  remark  is  also  that,  if  Lord  Chesterfield 
found  his  son  a  dull  scholar  in  the  "  graces,"  he  proved 
rather  too  apt  in  the  acquisition  of  hypocrisy.  Mr.  Stan- 
hope died,  leaving  his  father  no  legacy  but  a  wife  and  two 
children,  of  whose  very  existence  he  had  not  had  the  slight- 
est hint.  That  under  these  circumstances  he  did  not  at 
once  renounce  them,  thus  visiting  upon  the  third  generation 
the  sins  of  the  second  and  the  first,  has  been  in  some  quar- 
ters regarded  as  praiseworthy.  But  let  us  examine  this  act 
a  little  more  narrowly.  These  children  were  at  least  legiti- 
mate. They  had  no  share  in  the  failure  of  their  father  to 
be  what  he  was  never  made  for.  That  father  had  been  put 
by  no  act  of  his  own  into  a  situation  to  which  he  was  not 
adequate,  and  had  been  deprived  of  all  opportunity  to  gain 
any  other.  How  could  his  lordship  have  done  less  than  he 
did  ?  How  could  he  avoid  giving  to  the  victims  of  his  de- 
lusion at  least  the  means  of  escaping  from  its  worst  conse- 
quences ?  We  do  not  perceive  that  he  attempted  anything 
more  than  this.  The  boys  were  taken  care  of  and  put  to 
school,  and,  for  aught  we  know  of  them,  acted  in  life  about 
as  well  as  the  average  of  their  neighbors ;  but  the  dream  of 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  283 

making  finished  gentlemen  statesmen,  luckily  for  them,  was 
entirely  over.  The  Earl  reserved  his  last  words  of  advice 
more  suitably  for  the  heir  of  his  title,  a  distant  connection 
by  a  collateral  branch,  whom  he  also  made,  to  the  exclusion 
of  these  grandchildren,  heir  to  his  estates. 

Lord  Chesterfield's  system  made  him  neither  a  good,  a 
happy,  nor  a  successful  man.  Such  being  the  result  in  his 
own  person,  we  see  no  reason  why  it  should  be  further  held 
up  to  the  imitation  of  posterity.  Yet  there  is  something  in 
the  man,  invested  as  he  appears  to  us  with  all  the  authority 
of  wealth,  dignity,  rank,  and  title,  calculated  to  impose  upon 
the  multitude.  There  is  still  more  in  the  elegance  of  his 
style,  conveying  as  it  does  just  thoughts  in  a  most  clear  and 
forcible  way.  There  was  a  strange  union  about  him,  too, 
of  the  loosest  general  notions,  formed  from  his  experience 
of  the  corruption  of  his  times,  and  the  most  strict  adherence 
in  his  own  case  to  personal  integrity.  Early  in  his  career, 
when  he  was  appointed  to  succeed  Lord  Townshend  as 
Captain  of  the  Yeomen  of  the  Guard,  that  nobleman  advised 
him  to  make  the  place  more  profitable  than  he  himself  had 
done,  by  disposing  of  the  places  in  his  gift.  "  I  rather,  for 
this  time,"  adroitly  and  properly  replied  Chesterfield,  "wish 
to  follow  your  lordship's  example  than  your  advice."  He 
never  sold  a  commission.  The  same  spirit  appears  to  have 
followed  him  throughout  in  the  administration  of  official 
power.  He  had  a  thorough  detestation  of  the  jobbing  tem- 
per so  common  in  England,  and  not  by  any  means  unknown 
in  the  United  States,  among  political  men.  There  is  another 
point  in  his  history  which  is  highly  creditable  to  him.  He 
took  no  presents  from  any  one,  nor  did  he  approve  of  them 
when  taken  by  others.  There  is  a  passage  in  his  parting 


284  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

letter  to  his  godson  upon  this  subject,  which,  both  as  illus- 
trative of  his  own  character  and  as  full  of  sound  doctrine, 
we  can  not  resist  the  temptation  to  transcribe  : 

If  you  should  ever  fill  a  great  station  at  court,  take  care  above 
all  things  to  keep  your  hands  clean  and  pure  from  the  infamous  vice 
of  corruption,  a  vice  so  infamous  that  it  degrades  even  the  other 
vices  that  may  accompany  it.  Accept  no  present  whatever;  let 
your  character  in  that  respect  be  transparent  and  without  the  least 
speck ;  for,  as  avarice  is  the  vilest  and  dirtiest  vice  in  private,  corrup- 
tion is  so  in  public  life.  I  call  corruption  the  taking  of  a  sixpence 
more  than  the  just  and  known  salary  of  your  employment,  under 
any  pretense  whatsoever.  Use  what  power  and  credit  you  may 
have  at  court  in  the  service  of  merit  rather  than  of  kindred,  and 
not  to  get  pensions  and  reversions  for  yourself  or  your  family  ;  for 
I  call  that  also,  what  it  really  is,  scandalous  pollution,  though  of 
late  it  has  been  so  frequent  that  it  has  almost  lost  its  name  (vol.  iv., 
P-  430- 

Yet  strange  indeed  are  the  inconsistencies  of  man.  The 
same  mind  which  in  this  passage  seems  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  something  above  the  cold  and  mercenary  level  of  ordi- 
nary life,  in  another  part  of  these  letters  treats  of  one  of  the 
most  sacred  of  human  relations  in  the  following  thoroughly 
business-like  manner : 

Do  not  be  in  haste  to  marry,  but  look  about  you  first,  for  the 
affair  is  important.  There  are  but  two  objects  in  marriage,  love  or 
money.  If  you  marry  for  love,  you  will  certainly  have  some  very 
happy  days,  and  probably  many  very  uneasy  ones.  If  for  money, 
you  will  have  no  happy  days,  and  probably  no  uneasy  ones ;  in  this 
latter  case,  let  the  woman  at  least  be  such  a  one  that  you  can  live 
decently  and  amicably  with,  otherwise  it  is  a  robbery;  in  either 
case,  let  her  be  of  an  unblemished  and  unsuspected  character,  and 
of  a  rank  not  indecently  below  your  own  (vol.  ii.,  p.  427). 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  285 

Very  surely  it  could  not  have  been  the  love  of  moral  ex- 
cellence which  prompted  the  sentiment  in  the  first  extract, 
or  even  any  very  refined  estimate  of  human  duty.  We  much 
fear  that  we  must  resolve  it  into  temperament.  Avarice  was 
not  one  of  his  lordship's  vices.  He  was  above  the  low  arts 
to  which  it  naturally  resorts,  and  the  dirty  crimes  to  which 
it  leads.  But  he  was  above  them,  not  because  he  scorned 
them  as  wrong,  but  as  mean  ;  not  because  he  admired  purity 
of  purpose  and  singleness  of  heart,  but  because  he  deemed 
it  unbecoming  in  a  gentleman  to  put  himself  in  the  power 
of  people  that  were  beneath  him.  With  him  it  was  scandal- 
ous pollution  to  trade  in  pensions  and  reversions  for  him- 
self at  court,  but  it  was  right  enough  to  trade  with  a  woman 
for  money  in  the  article  of  marriage.  Yet,  if  we  closely 
analyze  the  moral  principle  involved  in  the  two  operations, 
it  will  be  scarcely  practicable  to  lay  down  a  rule  of  action 
which  would  justify  his  lordship's  discrimination. 

Passing  from  this  subject,  let  us  bring  the  present  article 
to  a  close  by  a  brief  review  of  the  various  claims  which  his 
lordship  has  made  upon  the  attention  of  posterity,  whether 
as  an  orator,  a  scholar,  a  patron  of  letters,  a  statesman,  a 
writer,  or  a  gentleman.  Few  of  England's  nobility  have 
tried  to  shine  so  variously ;  and,  if  he  did  not  equally  suc- 
ceed in  everything,  it  is  surely  creditable  in  him  that  he 
made  the  attempt. 

We  have  already  mentioned  the  circumstances  attending 
his  first  appearance  upon  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons ;  how  carefully  he  had  prepared  himself,  and  how  all 
his  preparation  was  defeated  by  the  inopportune  ridicule  of 
a  member  who  was  a  mimic.  This  incident  is  deserving  of 
notice,  because  it  lets  us  into  a  pretty  accurate  idea  of  his 


286  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

level  as  a  speaker.  With  a  highly  artificial  manner  it  is 
probable  that  his  lordship  united  the  amount  of  wit  and 
practical  good  sense  which  we  see  in  the  productions  he  left 
behind  him.  These  qualifications  made  him  an  agreeable 
and  an  elegant  speaker,  but  they  did  not  raise  him  above  the 
reach  of  vulgar  efforts  at  imitation.  There  was  wanting  in 
him  either  great  intellectual,  or  that  moral  superiority,  based 
upon  solid  and  noble  views  of  man's  duties,  which  com- 
mands the  respect  and  fastens  the  attention  even  of  the 
most  scornful.  We  have  never  heard  that  the  elder  or  the 
younger  Pitt,  Burke,  or  even  Fox,  in  spite  of  defects  of 
manner,  was  in  any  degree  embarrassed  by  the  attacks  that 
were  made  upon  him.  Some  of  these,  and  most  particu- 
larly Lord  Chatham,  were  remarkable  for  peculiarities  not  a 
little  striking  and  easy  to  be  taken  off.  Yet  they  continued 
to  exercise  their  powers  with  effect,  placing  ridicule  at  defi- 
ance. From  this  we  are  unavoidably  led  to  infer  that  Lord 
Chesterfield's  own  account  of  his  oratory  is  not  an  under- 
estimate, and  that  he  owed  the  greater  part  of  his  success  in 
it  to  his  polish.  That  success  was  established  after  he  had 
reached  a  congenial  spot  for  the  exercise  of  his  faculty  in 
the  House  of  Lords.  Yet  very  few  of  his  speeches  have 
been  handed  down  to  us  to  give  us  the  means  of  judging  of 
his  style.  Horace  Walpole,  no  very  friendly  critic  by  the 
way,  speaks  of  one  of  them  as  the  finest  speech  he  ever  lis- 
tened to,  which  is  saying  a  good  deal  for  a  man  who  wit- 
nessed the  Parliamentary  struggles  of  half  a  century — from 
the  great  Walpolean  battle  downward.  It  not  infrequently 
happens,  however,  that  this  remark  is  made  by  a  person  just 
fresh  from  hearing  a  well-delivered  address,  the  greatest 
merit  of  which,  after  all,  comes  from  the  effect  it  momen- 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  287 

tarily  produces.  Very  certainly  the  specimens  which  Dr. 
Maty  furnishes,  in  his  edition  of  his  lordship's  works,  will 
not  sustain  any  similar  rate  of  commendation.  They  are  in 
no  respect  above  the  level  of  middling  performances,  and 
sometimes  sink  even  below  it.  For  example,  in  the  second 
speech  upon  the  gin  act,  a  species  of  temperance  question, 
almost  the  same  with  that  which  agitated  Massachusetts  a 
few  years  since,  what  sort  of  force  is  there  in  the  following 
extract,  if  considered  as  a  piece  of  invective  ? — 

This  bill,  therefore,  appears  to  be  designed  only  to  thin  the  ranks 
of  mankind,  and  to  disburden  the  world  of  the  multitudes  that  in- 
habit it,  and  is  perhaps  the  strongest  proof  of  political  sagacity  that 
our  ministers  have  yet  exhibited.  They  well  know,  my  Lords,  that 
they  are  universally  detested,  and  that,  whenever  a  Briton  is  de- 
stroyed, they  are  freed  from  an  enemy ;  they  have  therefore  opened 
the  flood-gates  of  gin  upon  the  nation,  that,  when  it  is  less  numerous, 
it  may  be  more  easily  governed. 

Surely  this  is  not  the  tone  which  would  overthrow  a  min- 
istry. It  wants  force  and  sincerity.  We  can  see  at  once 
that  it  was  only  a  pleasant  literary  exercise  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  auditors.  It  would  do  to  make  even  the  Duke 
of  Newcastle  himself,  at  whom  it  was  directed,  laugh  very 
heartily.  But,  as  to  any  effect  which  it  was  likely  to  produce 
in  staying  the  passage  of  the  bill  itself,  he  might  as  well  have 
hoped  to  get  it  by  talking  in  an  unknown  tongue.  Yet  his 
lordship  was  doubtless  in  earnest  in  his  speech.  Temper- 
ance in  drinking  was  one  of  his  leading  virtues.  He  detested 
drunkenness  because  it  was  a  coarse  and  vulgar  vice.  He 
constantly  laments,  in  his  correspondence,  the  extent  to 
which  his  Irish  friends  were  addicted  to  it.  Yet,  instead  of 
treating  it  in  the  broad  and  noble  way  by  which  its  evils  can 


288  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

always  be  made  palpable  to  the  hearer,  he  sacrifices  the 
truth  to  frivolous  conceits.  This  we  take  to  be  the  true 
reason  and  the  whole  reason  why  his  lordship  did  not  in  his 
lifetime  obtain  the  influence  and  why  he  has  not  since  mer- 
ited the  reputation  that  belong  to  the  highest  species  of  ora- 
torical power. 

Of  his  lordship's  merit  as  a  scholar  and  a  patron  of  schol- 
ars we  have  little  evidence  beyond  the  scattered  opinions 
upon  books  to  be  gathered  from  the  letters  before  us,  and 
the  memorable  adventure  with  Dr.  Johnson.  To  scholar- 
ship, in  the  extended  sense  of  the  term,  he  had  no  claim — 
while  his  taste,  even  in  the  limited  regions  of  belles-lettres, 
was  far  from  being  accurate  or  pure.  It  is  very  clear  that 
he  did  not  relish  even  those  of  the  ancient  classics  which  he 
had  studied.  If  he  had,  surely  he  would  not  have  preferred 
the  "  Henriade  "  to  the  "  Iliad  "  or  "  ^Eneid,"  to  "  Paradise 
Lost,"  or  even  to  the  "Jerusalem  Delivered."  The  criti- 
cisms which  he  makes  upon  the  works  of  his  favorite  Vol- 
taire appear  sometimes  difficult  to  account  for.  At  this  day, 
we  prefer  the  wit  of  "  Micromegas,"  even  though  not  al- 
together original,  to  the  "  History  of  the  Crusades,"  or 
"  L'Esprit  Humain  " ;  yet  his  lordship  considers  the  latter 
as  excellent,  and  the  former  as  wholly  unworthy  of  the  au- 
thor. Through  all  these  opinions,  we  think  we  can  see  pre- 
vailing the  same  cold,  worldly  way  of  viewing  things  which 
we  find  predominating  on  other  subjects.  To  his  mind,  the 
cut  bono  seems  to  have  been  perpetually  present,  whatever 
the  topic  in  hand  might  be.  He  complains  of  Milton  that, 
"not  having  the  honor  to  be  acquainted  with  any  of  the 
parties  in  his  poem  except  the  man  and  the  woman,  the 
characters  and  speeches  of  a  dozen  or  two  of  angels,  and  of 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  289 

as  many  devils,  were  as  much  above  his  reach  as  his  enter- 
tainment. Keep  this  secret  for  me,"  he  adds  ;  "  for,  if  it 
should  be  known,  I  should  be  abused  by  every  tasteless 
pedant  and  every  solid  divine  in  England."  Which  means 
to  say,  we  presume,  that  to  admire  Milton  is  characteristic 
of  bad  taste — an  opinion  which  we  venture  to  say  his  lord- 
ship will  not  have  a  great  many  at  this  day  to  join  him  in, 
while  it  gives  us  a  pretty  fair  opportunity  of  estimating  the 
extent  of  his  own  taste. 

But,  if  his  lordship  was  not  himself  a  scholar,  he  certainly 
assumed  to  himself  to  be  the  patron  of  scholarship  in  others. 
It  was  to  him,  as  such,  that  Dr.  Johnson  ventured  to  address 
his  project  of  an  English  Dictionary,  and  not  merely  because 
his  lordship  happened  at  the  moment  to  be  high  in  office. 
We  allude  to  this  subject  the  more  willingly  because  we  have 
lately  seen  some  effort  made  to  deny  this,  and  to  excuse  the 
coldness  and  neglect  which  brought  upon  his  lordship  the 
celebrated  reply  of  the  Doctor.  It  is  pleaded  in  his  defense 
that,  in  1747,  the  date  of  the  dedication,  the  Doctor  was 
comparatively  unknown ;  that  he  was  himself  then  high  in 
office,  on  which  account  alone  the  address  was  made  to  him  ; 
and  that  he  could  scarcely  be  expected,  merely  because  he 
was  an  Earl  and  Secretary  of  State,  to  patronize  every  clever 
Grub  Street  author  who  might  think  it  expedient  to  try  to 
raise  money  out  of  him  by  a  complimentary  dedication. 
Such  is  the  argument  of  one  of  our  leading  contemporary 
journals  upon  the  other  side  of  the  water.  It  appears  to  us 
ill  supported  by  the  facts.  Lord  Chesterfield  was  not  re- 
garded as  a  common  lord  or  as  a  common  Secretary  of  State. 
He  had  a  reputation  of  his  own  for  taste  and  discrimination 
upon  which  he  piqued  himself.  It  was  upon  this  reputation 
19 


290  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

that  Dr.  Johnson  rested  his  application,  without  pretending 
to  claim  a  knowledge  of  the  man.  It  unquestionably  gave 
him  a  right  to  hope,  not  that  he  would  be  made  an  intimate 
companion,  but  that  the  specimen  furnished  of  his  capacity 
to  perform  his  task  would  from  its  own  merit  attract  the 
great  man's  favorable  attention  and  earn  his  patronage.  It 
is  the  peculiar  province  of  a  Maecenas  to  distinguish  by  his 
own  sagacity  the  proper  objects  in  whose  favor  to  exert  his 
influence,  from  those  who  are  not  so.  Had  his  lordship 
pretended  to  no  reputation  in  this  way,  his  neglect  of  John- 
son would  scarcely  have  been  deemed  an  error.  But  he 
must  be  judged  by  the  standard  which  he  furnishes  for  him- 
self. There  can  now  be  little  doubt  that  he  did  not  appre- 
ciate the  merit  of  the  Doctor's  proposal  as  he  ought  to  have 
done ;  that  he  gave  him  ten  guineas  rather  to  get  rid  of  him 
than  from  any  idea  of  encouraging  the  prosecution  of  the 
great  literary  undertaking ;  and  that  it  was  not  until  after 
the  Doctor's  reputation  was  firmly  established,  when  the  aid 
of  a  patron  was  no  longer  so  essential  as  it  had  been,  that 
he  saw  his  mistake,  and  endeavored  to  make  a  tardy  repara- 
tion for  it  by  publishing  a  couple  of  rather  frivolous  papers 
recommending  the  "  Dictionary  "  in  the  periodical  called 
"  The  World."  Surely,  under  these  circumstances,  the  ven- 
geance which  the  Doctor  took  was  not  uncalled  for.  He 
felt  that  his  lordship  had  only  meted  out  to  him  the  same 
measure  which  he  did  to  every  one,  the  same  which  every 
mere  worldly  man  who  forms  himself  upon  his  .model  will 
always  do  to  those  about  him— that  is,  he  had  neglected 
merit  while  nobody  else  had  found  it  out,  and  only  then  ac- 
knowledged it  when  it  was  no  longer  a  secret.  Dr.  Johnson 
expressed  his  sense  of  this  in  a  noble  and  dignified  manner. 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  291 

Chesterfield  felt  the  rebuke  to  be  too  just  ever  to  indulge  in 
such  hollow  excuses  as  have  been  lately  set  up  in  his  de- 
fense. It  was  one  of  many  legitimate  consequences  of  that 
system  of  morals  which  makes  appearances  and  not  the  re- 
ality the  great  object  to  be  cared  for. 

We  now  come  to  the  consideration  of  his  lordship's  career 
as  a  statesman — and  here  we  find  very  little  to  object  to  and 
something  positively  to  commend.  Without  possessing  any 
great  and  commanding  views  of  public  policy,  he  neverthe- 
less held  solid  and  judicious  ones.  He  was,  probably  more 
than  any  one  of  his  age,  the  exact  representative  of  the  com- 
mon sense  of  the  people  of  Great  Britain,  which  strongly 
relucted  against  the  whole  of  the  Hanoverian  policy,  without 
being  able  to  extricate  itself  from  it.  On  that  subject  there 
have  always  been  opposite  opinions,  and  time  must  yet  show 
which  of  them  is  abstractly  correct.  On  the  one  hand,  it 
must  be  conceded  that,  had  England  kept  herself  wholly 
clear  from  Continental  alliances,  she  would  never  have  ar- 
rived at  the  high  point  of  power  and  glory  upon  which  she 
now  stands.  On  the  other,  it  is  equally  undeniable  that  she 
would  not  have  so  rapidly  developed  the  seeds  of  internal 
disorganization,  under  the  forming  process  of  a  monstrous 
public  debt.  Lord  Chesterfield  had  little  or  no  adequate 
conception  of  the  resources  of  his  country,  when  he  pro- 
nounced it  on  the  brink  of  ruin  in  1757,  a  moment  at  which 
it  was  just  shooting  up  to  the  highest  state  of  prosperity. 
"  We  are  no  longer  a  nation,"  says  he  ;  "  I  never  yet  saw  so 
dreadful  a  prospect.  .  .  .  Ruin  is  so  near,"  he  writes  in  an- 
other place,  "  that,  were  Machiavel  at  the  head  of  affairs,  he 
could  not  retrieve  them."  Such  was  the  state  of  despond- 
ency of  his  lordship,  and  he  was  by  no  means  alone  in  it. 


292  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

at  the  instant  when  the  elder  Pitt  was  called  to  the  helm  of 
state,  and  when  he  proved  what  all  this  croaking  was  good 
for.  But  it  is  the  nature  of  timid  politicians  to  be  con- 
stantly looking  at  the  dark  side  of  things  while  they  are 
in  active  life,  and  to  predict  irretrievable  destruction  after 
they  retire.  We  have  had  many  such  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  the  non-fulfillment  of  whose  gloomy  prophecies 
has  sadly  disappointed  themselves  and  their  friends.  From 
all  which  experience  it  is  safe  to  arrive  at  the  conclusion 
that  great  bodies  move  slowly,  and  that  it  takes  a  good 
while  and  a  great  many  disasters,  as  well  as  long  years 
of  misgovernment,  to  crush  the  energies  of  a  prosperous 
nation. 

But  it  is  in  the  administration  of  Irish  affairs  during  the 
time  his  lordship  filled  the  post  of  Viceroy  that  he  has  gained 
his  greatest  reputation.  So  sadly  had  that  country  suffered 
from  its  connection  with  the  neighboring  kingdom,  that  it 
hailed  the  accession  of  a  man  who  did  nothing  more  than 
abstain  from  wrong-doing,  as  if  he  were  a  savior.  Even 
this  negative  species  of  excellence  required  on  his  part  the 
exercise  of  no  small  skill  and  discretion,  as  well  as  much 
firmness.  These  were  qualities  strictly  within  the  compass 
of  his  lordship's  character.  Of  greatness  or  goodness  we 
expect  to  find  little.  But  all  that  worldly  prudence  and 
calm,  shrewd,  good  sense  could  dictate,  may  very  naturally 
be  inferred.  The  moment  at  which  he  was  called  to  the 
post  was  a  critical  one.  It  was  in  the  midst  of  the  great 
success  of  the  Pretender  in  the  year  1745.  Yet  not  one  of 
the  many  Papists  who  unquestionably  wished  well  to  that 
enterprise  bestirred  himself  in  any  manner  to  advance  it. 
Ireland  has  seidom  been  more  tranquil  than  during  this  else- 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  293 

where  turbulent  year.  It  is  due  to  Chesterfield  that  he 
should  receive  praise  for  having  contributed  to  this  great 
result.  He  was,  besides,  a  steady  patron  of  temperance,  at 
a  time  when  and  among  a  people  by  whom  that  virtue  was 
not  regarded  with  the  same  favor  that  it  now  is.  He  was 
also  a  decided  opponent  to  the  corruptions  which  long  pre- 
vailed in  that  country  in  the  form  of  government  jobs.  All 
this,  joined  with  the  fascinations  of  his  address,  excited  the 
admiration  and  enthusiasm  of  that  impulsive  people.  But 
it  may  reasonably  be  doubted  whether  he  does  not  owe  the 
greater  part  of  his  apparent  success  to  the  fact  that  he  re- 
mained in  office  so  short  a  time.  Experience  teaches  us 
that  it  is  seldom  in  the  first,  or  even  the  second,  year  of  a 
popular  administration  that  it  is  most  likely  to  have  its 
strength  put  to  the  test.  There  must  be  time  for  discontent 
to  find  channels  by  which  to  vent  itself,  time  for  combina- 
tions to  be  formed,  time  for  affecting'  the  public  mind. 
Those  interested  in  deep  settled  abuses  do  not  take  much 
alarm,  so  long  as  remedies  are  only  talked  of.  Nothing 
more  was  attempted  by  Chesterfield.  It  can  not,  therefore, 
be  said  that  the  intricate  problem  of  Irish  government  has 
been  solved  in  opposition  to  the  conjoined  experience  of  all 
other  lords  lieutenant,  solely  because  his  lordship  succeeded 
in  carrying  it  on  acceptably  for  the  space  of  eight  months. 
Even  in  the  midst  of  the  praise  which  we  would  willingly 
accord  to  him  for  what  he  did  or  intended  to  do  in  this  situ- 
ation, some  qualification  must  be  made,  as  we  now  and  then 
catch  a  glimpse  of  the  principles  upon  which  he  acted.  For 
an  illustration,  we  must  cite  his  reliance  upon  the  gavel  act 
to  effect  the  decline  of  the  Catholic  faith.  Now,  the  gavel 
act  proposed  neither  more  nor  less  than  to  bribe  the  mem- 


294 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 


bers  of  a  family,  with  their  own  money,  to  sacrifice  one  an- 
other by  betraying  their  religious  faith.  If  the  estate  of  a 
Papist  was  to  be  divided  among  his  nearest  relations,  this 
law  prescribed  that  they  should  share  and  share  alike,  unless 
some  one  of  them  would  declare  himself  a  convert  to  Prot- 
estantism, in  which  case  he  might  take  the  whole.  Such 
was  the  law  which  Lord  Chesterfield,  in  a  letter  to  a  bishop 
of  the  Church,  recommended  should  be  strictly  adhered  to. 
And  the  most  remarkable  circumstance  about  it  is,  that  it 
does  not  seem  to  have  entered  into  his  conception  what 
kind  of  public  and  private  morality  he  was  encouraging. 
To  him  religion  was  merely  a  respectable  and  conservative 
civil  institution.  A  conversion  from  one  mode  of  faith  to 
another  was  of  little  moment  to  him,  who  viewed  them  all 
with  equal  indifference.  ^ 

It  remains  to  us  only  to  consider  his  lordship's  character 
as  a  writer.  This  will  rest  in  the  main  upon  those  letters  to 
his  son  which  he  wrote  in  confidence  and  without  any  ex- 
pectation of  their  ever  coming  before  the  public.  Besides 
these,  there  are,  however,  a  considerable  number  of  essays, 
furnished  for  political  and  literary  journals,  from  which  we 
can  gather  a  correct  idea  of  his  polished,  as  the  others  give 
one  of  his  unguarded,  style.  The  essays  are  remarkable  for 
grace  and  a  species  of  gentlemanly  humor  very  much  in 
keeping  with  the  idea  we  have  of  their  author.  We  might 
point  out  as  examples  the  papers  on  dueling,  on  pride  of 
birth,  and  ladies'  fashions.  Although  it  is  difficult  by  an 
extract  to  give  a  full  idea  of  them,  yet  we  will  venture  upon 
the  close  of  the  "  Essay  on  Dueling,"  not  only  on  account 
of  its  irony,  but  of  the  more  valuable  truth  which  lies  con- 
cealed beneath  it : 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  295 

There  is  one  reason,  indeed,  which  makes  me  suspect  that  a 
DUEL  may  not  always  be  the  infallible  criterion  of  veracity ;  and  that 
is,  that  the  combatants  very  rarely  meet  upon  equal  terms.  I  beg 
leave  to  state  a  case,  which  may  very  probably  and  not  even  un- 
frequently  happen,  and  which  is  yet  not  provided  for  nor  even  men- 
tioned in  the  INSTITUTES  of  HONOR. 

A  very  lean,  slender,  active  young  fellow  of  great  HONOR,  weigh- 
ing perhaps  not  quite  twelve  stone,  and  who  has,  from  his  youth, 
taken  lessons  of  HOMICIDE  from  a  murder-master,  has,  or  thinks  he 
has,  a  point  of  honor  to  discuss  with  an  unwieldy,  fat,  middle-aged 
gentleman  of  nice  HONOR  likewise,  weighing  four-and-twenty  stone, 
and  who  in  his  youth  may  not  possibly  have  had  the  same  commen- 
dable application  to  the  noble  science  of  HOMICIDE.  The  lean  gentle- 
man sends  a  very  civil  letter  to  the  fat  one,  inviting  him  to  come  and 
be  killed  by  him  the  next  morning  in  Hyde  Park.  Should  the  fat 
gentleman  accept  this  invitation,  and  waddle  to  the  place  appointed, 
he  goes  to  inevitable  slaughter.  Now,  upon  this  state  of  the  case, 
might  not  the  fat  gentleman,  consistent  with  the  rules  of  HONOR,  re- 
turn the  following  answer  to  the  invitation  of  the  lean  one  ? 

SIR  :  I  find  by  your  letter  that  you  do  me  the  justice  to  believe 
that  I  have  the  true  notions  of  honor  that  become  a  gentleman ;  and 
I  hope  I  shall  never  give  you  reason  to  change  your  opinion.  As  I 
entertain  the  same  opinion  of  you,  I  must  suppose  that  you  will  not 
desire  that  we  should  meet  upon  unequal  terms,  which  must  be  the 
case  were  we  to  meet  to-morrow.  At  present  I  unfortunately  weigh 
four-and-twenty  stone,  and  I  guess  that  you  do  not  exceed  twelve. 
From  this  circumstance  singly,  I  am  doubly  the  mark  that  you  are ; 
but,  besides  this,  you  are  active,  and  I  am  unwieldy.  I  therefore 
propose  to  you  that,  from  this  day  forward,  we  severally  endeavor, 
by  all  possible  means,  you  to  fatten  and  I  to  waste,  till  we  can  meet 
at  the  medium  of  eighteen  stone.  I  will  lose  no  time  on  my  part, 
being  impatient  to  prove  to  you  that  I  am  not  quite  unworthy  of  the 
good  opinion  which  you  are  pleased  to  express  of, 

Sir,  your  very  humble  servant. 


296  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

P.  S. — I  believe  it  may  not  be  amiss  for  us  to  communicate  to 
each  other,  from  time  to  time,  our  gradations  of  increase  or  decrease 
toward  the  desired  medium,  in  which,  I  presume,  two  or  three 
pounds  more  or  less,  on  either  side,  ought  not  to  be  considered. 

Yet,  though  his  essays  are  all  of  them  pleasing  specimens 
of  delicate  humor,  they  would  not  of  themselves  have  re- 
deemed his  memory  from  oblivion.  For  this  he  is  indebted 
entirely  to  the  letters  to  his  son,  which,  as  specimens  of  a 
particular  style  of  writing,  though  not  always  perfectly  cor- 
rect, are  not  exceeded  in  their  way  by  anything  in  the  lan- 
guage. Their  principal  merits  are  their  perspicuity  and 
elegance,  without  a  shadow  of  affectation.  In  them  will  be 
found  a  great  sum  of  worldly  wisdom  upon  the  minor  morals, 
conveyed  in  the  most  direct  and  intelligible  shape.  Even 
Dr.  Johnson  admitted  their  merit,  although  he  very  justly 
put  his  seal  of  reprobation  on  their  tendency.  We  can  not, 
for  instance,  too  highly  approve  of  a  passage  like  the  follow- 
ing upon  the  employment  of  time  : 

You  have,  it  is  true,  a  great  deal  of  time  before  you  ;  but,  in  this 
period  of  your  life,  one  hour  usefully  employed  may  be  worth  more 
than  four-and-twenty  hereafter ;  a  minute  is  precious  to  you  now, 
whole  days  may  possibly  not  be  so  forty  years  hence.  Whatever 
time  you  allow,  or  can  snatch,  for  serious  reading  (I  say  snatch,  be- 
cause company  and  a  knowledge  of  the  world  is  now  your  chief  ob- 
ject), employ  it  in  the  reading  of  some  one  book,  and  that  a  good 
one,  till  you  have  finished  it ;  and  do  not  distract  your  mind  with 
various  matters  at  the  same  time.  In  this  light  I  would  recommend 
to  you  to  read  tout  de  suite  "  Grotius  de  Jure  Belli  et  Pads,"  trans- 
lated by  Barbeyrac,  and  Puffendorf's  "  Jus  Gentium,"  translated  by 
the  same  hand.  For  accidental  quarters  of  hours,  read  works  of 
invention,  wit,  and  humor  of  the  best,  and  not  of  trivial  authors, 
either  ancient  or  modern. 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 


297 


Whatever  business  you  have,  do  it  the  first  moment  you  can ; 
never  by  halves,  but  finish  it  without  interruption,  if  possible.  Busi- 
ness must  not  be  sauntered  and  trifled  with ;  and  you  must  not  say 
to  it  as  Felix  did  to  Paul,  "  At  a  more  convenient  season  I  will 
speak  to  thee."  The  most  convenient  season  for  business  is  the 
first ;  but  study  and  business,  in  some  measure,  point  out  their  own 
times  to  a  man  of  sense  ;  time  is  much  oftener  squandered  away 
in  the  wrong  choice  and  improper  methods  of  amusement  and 
pleasures. 

Many  people  think  that  they  are  in  pleasures  provided  they  are 
neither  in  study  nor  in  business.  Nothing  like  it ;  they  are  doing 
nothing,  and  might  just  as  well  be  asleep.  They  contract  habitudes 
from  laziness,  and  they  only  frequent  those  places  where  they  are 
free  from  all  restraints  and  attentions.  Be  upon  your  guard  against 
this  idle  profusion  of  time ;  and  let  every  place  you  go  to  be  either 
the  scene  of  quick  and  lively  pleasures  or  the  school  of  your  im- 
provements ;  let  every  company  you  go  into  either  gratify  your 
senses,  extend  your  knowledge,  or  refine  your  manners.  Have  some 
decent  object  of  gallantry  in  view  at  some  places ;  frequent  others 
where  people  of  wit  and  taste  assemble ;  get  into  others  where 
people  of  superior  rank  and  dignity  command  respect  and  attention 
from  the  rest  of  the  company ;  but  pray  frequent  no  neutral  places 
from  mere  idleness  and  indolence.  Nothing  forms  a  young  man  so 
much  as  being  used  to  keep  respectable  and  superior  company, 
where  a  constant  regard  and  attention  is  necessaiy.  It  is  true  this 
is  at  first  a  disagreeable  state  of  restraint ;  but  it  soon  grows  habit- 
ual, and  consequently  easy ;  and  you  are  amply  paid  for  it  by  the 
improvement  you  make,  and  the  credit  it  gives  you.  What  you  said 
some  time  ago  was  very  true  concerning  le  Palais  Royal ;  to  one  of 
your  age  the  situation  is  disagreeable  enough  ;  you  can  not  expect  to 
be  much  taken  notice  of;  but  all  that  time  you  can  take  notice 
of  others;  observe  their  manners,  decipher  their  characters,  and 
insensibly  you  will  become  one  of  the  company  (vol.  ii.,  pp.  227, 
228). 


298  THE  EARL  OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

There  is  not  in  this  extract,  it 'is  true,  any  intimation  of 
the  higher  purposes  for  which  time  should  be  improved. 
The  idea,  as  usual  with  his  lordship,  is  limited  within  narrow 
and  selfish  bounds ;  yet,  so  far  as  it  goes,  it  is  sound  and 
well  conveyed.  No  man  had  a  greater  contempt  than  he  for 
the  vagabond  fops  who  have  since  affected  to  quote  him  as 
authority  for  their  idleness  and  their  indifference.  He  un- 
derstood the  truth  of  the  maxim  that  a  man,  in  order  to 
make  himself  respectable,  must  try  to  be  employed.  Neither 
did  he  imagine,  like  many  of  his  rank  in  England,  that  a 
title  and  wealth  excused  him  from  the  duty  of  exertion  in 
something  more  respectable  than  the  mere  search  after  plea- 
sure. His  great  defect  was  that  he  did  not  rest  his  notions 
of  that  duty  upon  a  basis  sufficiently  broad.  They  all  come 
back  to  the  benefit  to  be  gained  in  some  form  or  other  of 
personal  advantage.  They  looked  forth  neither  upon  soci- 
ety, nor  upon  one's  country,  nor  upon  one's  God.  They 
were  of  a  kind  which  wither  under  the  approach  of  age. 
Thus  it  happened  to  himself  that  at  fifty-four  he  retreated 
from  the  public  service,  not  again  to  return  to  it,  though  in- 
vited more  than  once.  He  retired  to  cultivate  cabbages  and 
pine-apples,  and  to  wear  out  the  patience  of  both  medical 
men  and  quacks  in  unavailing  experiments  to  remedy  the 
infirmities  of  his  constitution.  There  is  no  cheerfulness 
nor  dignity  in  the  scene  of  his  old  age.  His  views  of  life 
are  narrow,  cold,  and  gloomy.  So  early  as  1755,  or  nearly 
twenty  years  before  his  end,  he  indulges  in  the  following 
strain  of  reflection,  when  addressing  his  friend  the  Bishop 
of  Waterford : 

My  deafness  grows  gradually  worse,  which  in  my  mind  implies 
a  total  one  before  it  be  long.  In  this  unhappy  situation,  which  I 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  2g9 

have  reason  to  suppose  will  every  day  grow  worse,  I  still  keep  up 
my  spirits  tolerably ;  that  is,  I  am  free  from  melancholy,  which,  I 
think,  is  all  that  can  be  expected.  This  I  impute  to  that  degree  of 
philosophy  which  I  have  acquired  by  long  experience  of  the  world. 
I  have  enjoyed  all  its  pleasures,  and  consequently  know  their  futil- 
ity, and  do  not  regret  their  loss.  I  appraise  them  at  their  real  value, 
which  in  truth  is  very  low ;  whereas  those  who  have  not  experienced 
always  overrate  them.  They  only  see  their  gay  outside,  and  are 
dazzled  with  their  glare  ;  but  I  have  been  behind  the  scenes.  It  is  a 
common  notion,  and  like  many  common  ones  a  very  false  one,  that 
those  who  have  led  a  life  of  pleasure  and  business  can  never  be 
easy  in  retirement ;  whereas  I  am  persuaded  that  they  are  the  only 
people  who  can,  if  they  have  any  sense  and  reflection.  They  can 
look  back,  oculo  irretorto,  upon  what  they  from  knowledge  despise  ; 
others  have  always  a  hankering  after  what  they  are  not  acquainted 
with.  I  look  upon  all  that  has  passed  as  one  of  those  romantic 
dreams  that  opium  commonly  occasions,  and  I  do  by  no  means  de- 
sire to  repeat  the  nauseous  dose  for  the  sake  of  the  fugitive  dream. 
When  I  say  that  I  have  no  regret,  I  do  not  mean  that  I  have  no  re- 
morse ;  for  a  life  of  either  business,  or,  still  more,  pleasure,  never 
was  nor  never  will  be  a  state  of  innocence.  But  God,  who  knows 
the  strength  of  human  passions  and  the  weakness  of  human  reason, 
will,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  rather  mercifully  pardon  than  justly  punish 
acknowledged  errors  (vol.  iv.,  pp.  149,  150). 

This  letter  was  written  to  one  of  those  whom  his  lord- 
ship somewhere  else  is  pleased  to  designate  as  a  species  of 
constables  "  appointed  by  the  sovereign  power  of  a  country 
to  keep  up  decency  and  decorum  in  the  Church."  This 
may  account  for  the  unusual  approximation  to  a  religious 
feeling  which  we  find  in  the  extract.  Yet  what  does  this 
amount  to  ?  His  lordship,  satiated  with  the  pleasures  of 
life,  looks  back  upon  them  with  much  the  same  feeling  that 
a  man  in  the  morning  has  about  his  last  night's  debauch. 


300 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 


He  has  no  warming  sense  of  services  rendered  to  others ; 
of  duty  performed,  perhaps  imperfectly,  but  yet  with  an  ear- 
nest and  hearty  will ;  of  mutual  kindness  cultivated  between 
himself  and  others;  of  humble  resignation  to  the  will  of 
God  !  No  !  the  scene,  as  he  looks  back  upon  it,  is  cold  and 
wintry,  showing  marks  only  of  scorching  desolation  from  the 
heat  of  summer  passions.  And  the  present  enjoyment,  such 
as  it  is,  proceeds  from  vacuity.  Nor  yet  does  he  make  it 
very  clear  that  his  own  history  disproves  the  correctness  of 
the  common  notion  which  he  condemns.  His  retirement 
will  scarcely  furnish  encouragement  to  any  who  may  be  anx- 
ious to  leave  the  busy  world  in  quest  of  ease.  His  letters 
form  one  continued  lament,  partly  owing  to  his  increasing 
deafness,  partly  to  disappointment  as  to  his  son's  success, 
but  most  of  all  to  the  absence  of  all  the  nobler  motives  of 
action  in  life.  This  is  the  grand  defect  of  his  whole  theory. 
The  man  is  liable  to  outlive  the  system,  and  then  the  world 
becomes  a  dreary  blank.  Cut  off  from  society,  from  public 
life,  from  the  domestic  affections,  and  from  the  consolations 
of  a  religious  faith,  Chesterfield  was  as  much  isolated  at 
sixty  as  the  blasted  oak  in  the  center  of  a  barren  heath. 
Yet  over  all  this  wretchedness  there  still  remained,  like  a 
coat  of  steel  upon  a  skeleton,  the  glazed  and  polished  sur- 
face of  good  breeding  which  his  lordship  had  laid  on  thick 
to  conceal  the  deep  defects  of  his  early  years.  Even  upon 
the  bed  of  death,  "  Give  Dayrolles  a  chair  "  were  the  last 
expressed  thoughts  of  this  worldly  Earl.  Not  a  single  ex- 
alted sentiment  fell  from  him,  at  that  moment,  to  counter- 
act the  chill  of  a  long  career.  He  was  indeed  what  he 
describes  himself,  one  hackneyed  in  the  ways  of  life.  We 
have  endeavored  to  show  in  his  history  the  nature  and  the 


THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD.  301 

advantages  of  such  a  training.     Let  those  who  are  inclined 
to  be  fascinated  by  his  example  take  warning  by  his  fate. 

In  the  view  which  we  have  taken,  it  will  be  seen  that  we 
have  not  dwelt  upon  the  moral  tendency  of  the  advice  to  be 
found  in  the  present  work.  This  has  already  been  so  much 
descanted  upon  in  many  former  publications,  as  well  as  in 
the  pages  of  this  journal,  that  little  can  be  added.  We  shall 
therefore,  avoiding  the  grosser  passages,  simply  content  our- 
selves with  extracting  from  the  maxims  addressed  by  his 
lordship  to  his  son  such  of  them  as  seem  most  briefly  to  em- 
body the  character  of  the  author : 

In  your  friendships  and  in  your  enmities  let  your  confidence  and 
your  hostilities  have  certain  bounds ;  make  not  the  former  danger- 
ous, nor  the  latter  irreconcilable.  There  are  strange  vicissitudes  in 
business. 

It  is  always  right  to  detect  a  fraud,  and  to  perceive  a  folly ;  but 
it  is  often  very  wrong  to  expose  either.  A  man  of  business  should 
always  have  his  eyes  open,  but  must  often  seem  to  have  them  shut. 

If  you  would  be  a  favorite  of  your  King,  address  yourself  to  his 
weaknesses.  An  application  to  his  reason  will  seldom  prove  very 
successful. 

A  cheerful,  easy  countenance  and  behavior  are  very  useful  at 
court ;  they  make  fools  think  you  a  good-natured  man ;  and  they 
make  designing  men  think  you  an  undesigning  one. 

Flattery,  though  a  base  coin,  is  the  necessary  pocket-money  at 
court ;  where,  by  custom  and  consent,  it  has  obtained  such  a  cur- 
rency that  it  is  no  longer  a  fraudulent  but  a  legal  payment. 

The  reputation  of  generosity  is  to  be  purchased  pretty  cheap ;  it 
does  not  depend  so  much  upon  a  man's  general  expense  as  it  does 
upon  his  giving  handsomely  where  it  is  proper  to  give  at  all  (vol.  ii., 
pp.  322-326). 

It  would  seem,  by  the  care  which  his  lordship  bestowed 


302  THE  EARL   OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

upon  the  sketches  of  the  principal  persons  of  his  time,  as  if 
he  must  have  meditated  some  extensive  work  of  an  histori- 
cal kind,  in  which  they  would  naturally  have  found  a  place. 
Had  the  whole  been  executed  with  any  portion  of  the  spirit 
to  be  found  in  these  fragments,  the  author  would  have 
earned  a  still  higher  reputation  than  he  is  likely  now  to 
hold.  Among  them,  one  of  the  most  curious  is  the  article 
relating  to  Lord  Bute,  which  Dr.  Maty,  or  his  successor, 
thought  proper  to  suppress,  while  he  published  in  his  edi- 
tion most  of  the  rest.  The  portraits  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole, 
of  Lord  Hardwicke,  of  the  elder  Pitt,  of  the  Duke  of  New- 
castle, and  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  will  continue  for  ever  valu- 
able to  those  who  wish  to  understand  the  history  of  the 
early  Brunswick  princes.  Chesterfield's  habits  made  him  a 
keen  observer  of  the  virtues  and  vices,  the  merits  and  the 
follies  of  other  men;  while  his  judgment  was  not  warped,  as 
that  of  many  is  apt  to  be,  by  any  excess  of  sympathy  with 
or  of  hostility  to  them.  In  this,  as  in  all  things  else,  he 
shows  his  great  want  to  have  been  the  want  of  a  heart.  We 
scarcely  know  how  better  to  close  this  view  of  his  character 
than,  without  meaning  to  excuse  him,  to  apply  his  own  re- 
mark upon  a  much  bolder  person  than  he  in  both  extremes ; 
we  mean  his  friend  Henry  St.  John,  Lord  Bolingbroke,  when 
he  says  of  him,  "  Upon  the  whole  of  this  extraordinary  char- 
acter, where  good  and  ill  were  perpetually  jostling  each 
other,  what  can  we  say  but,  '  Alas !  poor  human  nature ! ' ' 


DEFENSE   OF  POETRY* 


"  GENTLE  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  thou  knewest  what  belonged 
to  a  scholar ;  thou  knewest  what  pains,  what  toil,  what 
travel,  conduct  to  perfection ;  well  couldest  thou  give  every 
virtue  his  encouragement,  every  art  his  due,  every  writer 
his  desert,  'cause  none  more  virtuous,  witty,  or  learned  than 
thyself."!  This  eulogium  was  bestowed  upon  one  of  the 
most  learned  and  illustrious  men  that  adorned  the  last  half 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  Literary  history  is  full  of  his 
praises.  He  is  spoken  of  as  the  ripe  scholar,  the  able  states- 
man— "  the  soldier's,  scholar's,  courtier's  eye,  tongue,  sword  " 
— the  man  "whose  whole  life  was  poetry  put  into  action." 
He  and  the  Chevalier  Bayard  were  the  connecting  links  be- 
.tween  the  ages  of  chivalry  and  our  own. 

Sir  Philip  Sidney  was  born  at  Penshurst,  in  West  Kent, 
on  the  29th  of  November,  1554,  and  died  on  the  i6th  day 
of  October,  1586,  from  the  wound  of  a  musket-shot  received 
under  the  walls  of  Zutphen,  a  town  in  Guelderland,  on  the 
banks  of  the  Issel.  When  he  was  retiring  from  the  field  of 
battle  an  incident  occurred  which  well  illustrates  his  chiv- 
alrous spirit,  and  that  goodness  of  heart  which  gained  him 


*  The  Defence  of  Poesy.     By  Sir  Philip  Sidney.     Republished  in  the 
Library  of  the  Old  English  Prose  Writers.     Vol.  II. 
f  Nash's  Pierce  Penniless. 


3o4  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

the  appellation  of  the  "  Gentle  Sir  Philip  Sidney."  The  cir- 
cumstance has  been  made  the  subject  of  an  historical  paint- 
ing by  West.  It  is  thus  related  by  Lord  Brooke : 

The  horse  he  rode  upon  was  rather  furiously  choleric  than 
bravely  proud,  and  so  forced  him  to  forsake  the  field,  but  not  his 
back,  as.  the  noblest  and  fittest  bier  to  carry  a  martial  commander 
to  his  grave.  In  which  sad  progress,  passing  along  by  the  rest  of 
the  army  where  his  uncle  the  General  was,  and  being  thirsty  with 
excess  of  bleeding,  he  called  for  drink,  which  was  presently  brought 
him ;  but,  as  he  was  putting  the  bottle  to  his  mouth,  he  saw  a  poor 
soldier  carried  along,  who  had  eaten  his  last  at  the  same  feast, 
ghastly  casting  up  his  eyes  at  the  bottle.  Which  Sir  Philip  per- 
ceiving, took  it  from  his  head,  before  he  drank,  and  delivered  it  to  the 
poor  man,  with  these  words,  "  Thy  necessity  is  yet  greater  than  mine." 

The  most  celebrated  productions  of  Sidney's  pen  are  the 
"  Arcadia  "  and  the  "  Defence  of  Poesy."  The  former  was 
written  during  the  author's  retirement  at  Wilton,  the  resi- 
dence of  his  sister,  the  Countess  of  Pembroke.  Though  so 
much  celebrated  in  its  day,*  it  is  now  little  known,  and  still 
less  read.  Its  very  subject  prevents  it  from  being  popular 
at  present ;  for  now  the  pastoral  reed  seems  entirely  thrown 
aside.  The  muses  no  longer  haunt  the  groves  of  Arcadia. 
The  shepherd's  song — the  sound  of  oaten  pipe,  and  the 
scenes  of  pastoral  loves  and  jealousies,  are  no  becoming 

*  Many  of  our  readers  will  recollect  the  high-wrought  eulogium  of 
Harvey  Pierce,  when  he  consigned  the  work  to  immortality  :  "  Live  ever 
sweete,  sweete  booke  :  the  simple  image  of  his  gentle  witt ;  and  the 
golden  pillar  of  his  noble  courage  ;  and  ever  notify  unto  the  world  that 
thy  writer  was  the  secretary  of  eloquence,  the  breath  of  the  muses,  the 
honey-bee  of  the  daintyest  flowers  of  witt  and  arte  ;  the  pith  of  morale 
and  intellectual  virtues,  the  arme  of  Bellona  in  the  field,  the  tongue  of 
Suada  in  the  chamber,  the  sprite  of  Practice  in  esse,  and  the  paragon  of 
excellency  in  print." 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  305 

themes  for  the  spirit  of  the  age.  Few  at  present  take  for 
their  motto,  " flumina  amo  silvasque  inglorius"  and,  conse- 
quently, few  read  the  "  Arcadia." 

The  "Defence  of  Poesy  "  is  a  work  of  rare  merit.  It  is 
a  golden  little  volume,  which  the  scholar  may  lay  beneath 
his  pillow,  as  Chrysostom  did  the  works  of  Aristophanes. 
We  do  not,  however,  mean  to  analyze  it  in  this  place ;  but 
recommend  to  our  readers  to  purchase  this  "  sweet  food  of 
sweetly  uttered  knowledge."  It  will  be  read  with  delight 
by  all  who  have  a  taste  for  the  true  beauties  of  poetry ;  and 
may  go  far  to  remove  the  prejudices  of  those  who  have  not. 
To  this  latter  class  we  address  the  concluding  remarks  of 
the  author : 

So  that  since  the  ever-praiseworthy  poesy  is  full  of  virtue,  breed- 
ing delightfulness,  and  void  of  no  gift  that  ought  to  be  in  the  noble 
name  of  learning  ;  since  the  blames  laid  against  it  are  either  false  or 
feeble ;  since  the  cause  why  it  is  not  esteemed  in  England  is  the 
fault  of  poet-apes,  not  poets  ;  since,  lastly,  our  tongue  is  most  fit  to 
honor  poesy,  and  to  be  honored  by  poesy ;  I  conjure  you  all  that 
have  had  the  evil  luck  to  read  this  ink-wasting  toy  of  mine,  even  in 
the  name  of  the  nine  muses,  no  more  to  scorn  the  sacred  mysteries 
of  poesy ;  no  more  to  laugh  at  the  name  of  poets,  as  though  they 
were  next  inheritors  to  fools  ;  no  more  to  jest  at  the  reverend  title 
of  "  a  rhymer  "  ;  but  to  believe,  with  Aristotle,  that  they  were  the  an- 
cient treasurers  of  the  Grecians'  divinity ;  to  believe,  with  Bembus,  that 
they  were  the  first  bringers  in  of  all  civility  ;  to  believe,  with  Scaliger, 
that  no  philosopher's  precepts  can  sooner  make  you  an  honest  man, 
than  the  reading  of  Virgil ;  to  believe,  with  Clauserus,  the  translator 
of  Cornutus,  that  it  pleased  the  heavenly  Deity  by  Hesiod  and  Ho- 
mer, under  the  veil  of  fables,  to  give  us  all  knowledge,  logic,  rheto- 
ric, philosophy,  natural  and  moral,  and  "  quid  non  ?  "  to  believe, 
with  me,  that  there  are  many  mysteries  contained  in  poetry,  which 
20 


3o6  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

of  purpose  were  written  darkly,  lest  by  profane  wits  it  should  be 
abused ;  to  believe,  with  Landin,  that  they  are  so  beloved  of  the 
gods,  that  whatsoever  they  write  proceeds  of  a  divine  fury ;  lastly, 
to  believe  themselves,  when  they  tell  you  they  will  make  you  immor- 
tal by  their  verses. 

Thus  doing,  your  names  shall  flourish  in  the  printers'  shops ; 
thus  doing,  you  shall  be  of  kin  to  many  a  poetical  preface  ;  thus 
doing,  you  shall  be  most  fair,  most  rich,  most  wise,  most  all ;  you 
shall  dwell  upon  superlatives ;  thus  doing,  though  you  be  "  libertino 
patre  natus,"  you  shall  suddenly  grow  "  Herculea  proles  " — 

"  Si  quid  mea  carmina  possunt "  : 

thus  doing,  your  soul  shall  be  placed  with  Dante's  Beatrix,  or  Vir- 
gil's Anchises. 

But  if  (fie  of  such  a  but !)  you  be  born  so  near  the  dull-making 
cataract  of  Nilus,  that  you  can  not  hear  the  planet-like  music  of 
poetry ;  if  you  have  so  earth-creeping  a  mind  that  it  can  not  lift 
itself  up  to  look  to  the  sky  of  poetry,  or  rather,  by  a  certain  rustical 
disdain,  will  become  such  a  mome  as  to  be  a  Momus  of  poetry ; 
then,  though  I  will  not  wish  unto  you  the  ass's  ears  of  Midas,  nor 
to  be  driven  by  a  poet's  verses,  as  Bubonax  was,  to  hang  himself ; 
nor  to  be  rhymed  to  death,  as  is  said  to  be  done  in  Ireland  •,  yet 
thus  much  curse  I  must  send  you  in  the  behalf  of  all  poets  •,  that 
while  you  live,  you  live  in  love,  and  never  get  favor,  for  lacking  skill 
of  a  sonnet ;  and  when  you  die,  your  memory  die  from  the  earth  for 
want  of  an  epitaph. 

As  no  "  Apologia  for  Poetrie  "  has  appeared  among  us, 
we  hope  that  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  "  Defence  "  will  be  widely 
read  and  long  remembered.  O  that  in  our  country  it  might  be 
the  harbinger  of  as  bright  an  intellectual  day  as  it  was  in  his 
own  !  With  us,  the  spirit  of  the  age  is  clamorous  for  utility 
— for  visible,  tangible  utility — for  bare,  brawny,  muscular 
utility.  We  would  be  roused  to  action  by  the  voice  of  the 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  307 

populace,  and  the  sounds  of  the  crowded  mart,  and  not 
"  lulled  asleep  in  shady  idleness  with  poet's  pastimes."  We 
are  swallowed  up  in  schemes  for  gain,  and  engrossed  with 
contrivances  for  bodily  enjoyments,  as  if  this  particle  of  dust 
were  immortal — as  if  the  soul  needed  no  aliment,  and  the 
mind  no  raiment.  We  glory  in  the  extent  of  our  territory, 
in  our  rapidly  increasing  population,  in  our  agricultural 
privileges,  and  our  commercial  advantages.  We  boast  of 
the  magnificence  and  beauty  of  our  natural  scenery — of  the 
various  climates  of  our  sky — the  summers  of  our  Northern 
regions — the  salubrious  winters  of  the  South,  and  of  the  va- 
rious products  of  our  soil,  from  the  pines  of  our  Northern 
highlands  to  the  palm-tree  and  aloes  of  our  Southern  fron- 
tier. We  boast  of  the  increase  and  extent  of  our  physical 
strength,  the  sound  of  populous  cities,  breaking  the  silence 
and  solitude  of  our  Western  Territories — plantations  con- 
quered from  the  forest,  and  gardens  springing  up  in  the 
wilderness.  Yet  the  true  glory  of  a  nation  consists  not  in 
the  extent  of  its  territory,  the  pomp  of  its  forests,  the  majesty 
of  its  rivers,  the  height  of  its  mountains,  and  the  beauty  of 
its  sky,  but  in  the  extent  of  its  mental  power — the  majesty 
of  its  intellect — the  height,  and  depth,  and  purity  of  its 
moral  nature.  It  consists  not  in  what  nature  has  given  to 
the  body,  but  in  what  nature  and  education  have  given  to 
the  mind — not  in  the  world  around  us,  but  in  the  world 
within  us — not  in  the  circumstances  of  fortune,  but  in  the 
attributes  of  the  soul — not  in  the  corruptible,  transitory,  and 
perishable  forms  of  matter,  but  in  the  incorruptible,  the  per- 
manent, the  imperishable  mind.  True  greatness  is  the  great- 
ness of  the  mind — the  true  glory  of  a  nation  is  moral  and 
intellectual  preeminence. 


3o8  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

But  still  the  main  current  of  education  runs  in  the  wide 
and  not  well-defined  channel  of  immediate  and  practical 
utility.  The  main  point  is  how  to  make  the  greatest  prog- 
ress in  worldly  prosperity — how  to  advance  most  rapidly  in 
the  career  of  gain.  This,  perhaps,  is  necessarily  the  case  to 
a  certain  extent  in  a  country  where  every  man  is  taught  to 
rely  upon  his  own  exertions  for  a  livelihood,  and  is  the  ar- 
tificer of  his  own  fortune  and  estate.  But  it  ought  not  to  be 
exclusively  so.  We  ought  not,  in  the  pursuit  of  wealth  and 
worldly  honor,  to  forget  those  embellishments  of  the  mind 
and  the  heart  which  sweeten  social  intercourse  and  improve 
the  condition  of  society.  And  yet,  in  the  language  of  Dr. 
Paley,  "  Many  of  us  are  brought  up  with  this  world  set  be- 
fore us,  and  nothing  else.  Whatever  promotes  this  world's 
prosperity  is  praised ;  whatever  hurts  and  obstructs  this 
world's  prosperity  is  blamed  ;  and  there  all  praise  and  cen- 
sure end.  We  see  mankind  about  us  in  motion  and  action, 
but  all  these  motions  and  actions  directed  to  worldly  objects. 
We  hear  their  conversation,  but  it  is  all  the  same  way.  And 
this  is  what  we  see  and  hear  from  the  first :  The  views  which 
are  continually  placed  before  our  eyes  regard  this  life  alone 
and  its  interests.  Can  it  then  be  wondered  at  that  an  early 
worldly-mindedness  is  bred  in  our  hearts  so  strong  as  to 
shut  out  heavenly-mindedness  entirely  ?  "  And  this,  though 
not  in  so  many  words,  yet  in  fact  and  in  its  practical  ten- 
dency, is  the  popular  doctrine  of  utility. 

Now,  under  correction  be  it  said,  we  are  much  led  astray 
by  this  word  utility.  There  is  hardly  a  word  in  our  language 
whose  meaning  is  so  vague,  and  so  often  misunderstood  and 
misapplied.  We  too  often  limit  its  application  to  those  ac- 
quisitions and  pursuits  which  are  of  immediate  and  visible 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 


3°9 


profit  to  ourselves  and  the  community ;  regarding  as  com- 
paratively or  utterly  useless  many  others  which,  though  more 
remote  in  their  effects  and  more  imperceptible  in  their  op- 
eration, are,  notwithstanding,  higher  in  their  aim,  wider  in 
their  influence,  more  certain  in  their  results,  and  more  inti- 
mately connected  with  the  common  weal.  We  are  too  apt 
to  think  that  nothing  can  be  useful  but  what  is  done  with  a 
noise,  at  noonday,  and  at  the  corners  of  the  streets  ;  as  if 
action  and  utility  were  synonymous,  and  it  were  not  as  use- 
less to  act  without  thinking  as  it  is  to  think  without  acting. 
But  the  truth  is,  the  word  utility  has  a  wider  signification 
than  this.  It  embraces  in  its  proper  definition  whatever 
contributes  to  our  happiness ;  and  thus  includes  many  of 
those  arts  and  sciences,  many  of  those  secret  studies  and 
solitary  avocations  which  are  generally  regarded  either  as 
useless  or  as  absolutely  injurious  to  society.  Not  he  alone 
does  service  to  the  state  whose  wisdom  guides  her  councils 
at  home,  nor  he  whose  voice  asserts  her  dignity  abroad.  A 
thousand  little  rills,  springing  up  in  the  retired  walks  of  life, 
go  to  swell  the  rushing  tide  of  national  glory  and  prosperity ; 
and  whoever  in  the  solitude  of  his  chamber,  and  by  even  a  sin- 
gle effort  of  his  mind,  has  added  to  the  intellectual  preemi- 
nence of  his  country,  has  not  lived  in  vain,  nor  to  himself  alone. 
Does  not  the  pen  of  the  historian  perpetuate  the  fame  of  the 
hero  and  the  statesman  ?  Do  not  their  names  live  in  the 
song  of  the  bard  ?  Do  not  the  pencil  and  the  chisel  touch 
the  soul  while  they  delight  the  eye  ?  Does  not  the  spirit  of 
the  patriot  and  the  sage,  looking  from  the  painted  canvas, 
or  eloquent  from  the  marble  lip,  fill  our  hearts  with  venera- 
tion for  all  that  is  great  in  intellect  and  godlike  in  virtue  ? 
If  this  be  true,  then  are  the  ornamental  arts  of  life  not 


3io 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 


merely  ornamental,  but  at  the  same  time  highly  useful ;  and 
poetry  and  the  fine  arts  become  the  instruction  as  well  as 
the  amusement  of  mankind.  They  will  not  till  our  lands, 
nor  freight  our  ships,  nor  fill  our  granaries  and  our  coffers ; 
but  they  will  enrich  the  heart,  freight  the  understanding, 
and  make  up  the  garnered  fullness  of  the  mind.  And  this 
we  hold  to  be  the  true  view  of  the  subject. 

Among  the  barbarous  nations,  which  in  the  early  cen- 
turies of  our  era  overran  the  south  of  Europe,  the  most  con- 
tumelious epithet  which  could  be  applied  to  a  man  was  to 
call  him  a  Roman.  All  the  corruption  and  degeneracy  of 
the  Western  Empire  were  associated,  in  the  minds  of  the 
Gothic  tribes,  with  a  love  of  letters  and  the  fine  arts.  So 
far  did  this  belief  influence  their  practice  that  they  would 
not  suffer  their  children  to  be  instructed  in  the  learning  of 
the  south.  "  Instruction  in  the  sciences,"  said  they,  "  tends 
to  corrupt,  enervate,  and  depress  the  mind ;  and  he  who  has 
been  accustomed  to  tremble  under  the  rod  of  a  pedagogue, 
will  never  look  on  a  sword  or  a  spear  with  an  undaunted 
eye."*  We  apprehend  that  there  are  some,  and  indeed  not 
a  few  in  our  active  community,  who  hold  the  appellation  of 
scholar  and  man  of  letters  in  as  little  repute  as  did  our 
Gothic  ancestors  that  of  Roman ;  associating  with  it  about 
the  same  ideas  of  effeminacy  and  inefficiency.  They  think 
that  the  learning  of  books  is  not  wisdom ;  that  study  unfits 
a  man  for  action ;  that  poetry  and  nonsense  are  convertible 
terms;  that  literature  begets  an  effeminate  and  craven  spirit; 
in  a  word,  that  the  dust  and  cobwebs  of  a  library  are  a  kind 
of  armor,  which  will  not  stand  long  against  the  hard  knocks 


*  Procop.  de  bello  Gothor.  ap.  Robertson,  History  of  Charles  V.,  vol. 
p.  234. 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  311 

of  the  "  bone  and  muscle  of  the  state  "  and  the  "  huge  two- 
fisted  sway  "  of  the  stump  orator.  Whenever  intellect  is 
called  into  action,  they  would  have  the  mind  display  a  rough 
and  natural  energy — strength,  straightforward  strength,  un- 
tutored in  the  rules  of  art,  and  unadorned  by  elegant  and 
courtly  erudition.  They  want  the  stirring  voice  of  Demos- 
thenes, accustomed  to  the  roar  of  the  tempest  and  the  dash- 
ing of  the  sea  upon  its  hollow-sounding  shore,  rather  than 
the  winning  eloquence  of  Phalereus,  coming  into  the  sun 
and  dust  of  the  battle,  not  from  the  martial  tent  of  the  sol- 
dier, but  from  the  philosophic  shades  of  Theophrastus. 

But  against  no  branch  of  scholarship  is  the  cry  so  loud 
as  against  poetry,  "  the  quintessence,  or  rather  the  luxury  of 
all  learning."  Its  enemies  pretend  that  it  is  injurious  both 
to  the  mind  and  the  heart ;  that  it  incapacitates  us  for  the 
severer  discipline  of  professional  study ;  and  that,  by  excit- 
ing the  feelings  and  misdirecting  the  imagination,  it  unfits  us 
for  the  common  duties  of  life  and  the  intercourse  of  this 
matter-of-fact  world.  And  yet  such  men  have  lived,  as  Ho- 
mer, and  Dante,  and  Milton — poets  and  scholars  whose 
minds  were  bathed  in  song,  and  yet  not  weakened ;  men 
who  severally  carried  forward  the  spirit  of  their  age,  who 
soared  upward  on  the  wings  of  poetry,  and  yet  were  not  un- 
fitted to  penetrate  the  deepest  recesses  of  the  human  soul 
and  search  out  the  hidden  treasures  of  wisdom  and  the 
secret  springs  of  thought,  feeling,  and  action.  None  fought 
more  bravely  at  Marathon,  Salamis,  and  Plataea  than  did  the 
poet  ^Eschylus.  Richard  Cceur-de-Lion  was  a  poet ;  but 
his  boast  was  in  his  very  song : 

"  Bon  guerrier  a  1'estendart 
Trouvaretz  le  Roi  Richard." 


3I2 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 


Ercilla  and  Garcilaso  were  poets;  but  the  great  epic  of 
Spain  was  written  in  the  soldier's  tent  and  on  the  field  of 
battle,  and  the  descendant  of  the  Incas  was  slain  in  the  as- 
sault of  a  castle  in  the  south  of  France.  Cervantes  lost  an 
arm  at  the  battle  of  Lepanto,  and  Sir  Philip  Sidney  was  the 
breathing  reality  of  the  poet's  dream,  a  living  and  glorious 
proof  that  poetry  neither  enervates  the  mind  nor  unfits  us 
for  the  practical  duties  of  life. 

Nor  is  it  less  true  that  the  legitimate  tendency  of  poetry 
is  to  exalt  rather  than  to  debase — to  purify  rather  than  to 
corrupt.  Read  the  inspired  pages  of  the  Hebrew  prophets ; 
the  eloquent  aspirations  of  the  Psalmist !  Where  did  ever 
the  spirit  of  devotion  bear  up  the  soul  more  steadily  and 
loftily  than  in  the  language  of  their  poetry  ?  And  where 
has  poetry  been  more  exalted,  more  spirit-stirring,  more  ad- 
mirable, or  more  beautiful,  than  when  thus  soaring  upward 
on  the  wings  of  sublime  devotion,  the  darkness  and  shadows 
of  earth  beneath  it,  and  from  above  the  brightness  of  an 
opened  heaven  pouring  around  it?  It  is  true  the  poetic 
talent  may  be,  for  it  has  been,  most  lamentably  perverted. 
But  when  poetry  is  thus  perverted  —  when  it  thus  for- 
gets its  native  sky  to  grovel  in  what  is  base,  sensual, 
and  depraved  —  though  it  may  not  have  lost  all  its  origi- 
nal brightness,  nor  appear  less  than  "  the  excess  of  glory 
obscured,"  yet  its  birthright  has  been  sold,  its  strength 
has  been  blasted,  and  its  spirit  wears  "  deep  scars  of  thun- 
der." 

It  does  not,  then,  appear  to  be  the  necessary  nor  the 
natural  tendency  of  poetry  to  enervate  the  mind,  corrupt 
the  heart,  or  incapacitate  us  for  performing  the  private  and 
public  duties  of  life.  On  the  contrary,  it  may  be  made,  and 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  313 

should  be  made,  an  instrument  for  improving  the  condition 
of  society,  and  advancing  the  great  purpose  of  human  hap- 
piness. Man  must  have  his  hours  of  meditation  as  well  as 
of  action.  The  unities  of  time  are  not  so  well  preserved  in 
the  great  drama,  but  that  moments  will  occur  when  the 
stage  must  be  left  vacant,  and  even  the  busiest  actors  pass 
behind  the  scenes.  There  will  be  eddies  in  the  stream  of 
life,  though  the  main  current  sweeps  steadily  onward,  till 
"  it  pours  in  full  cataract  over  the  grave."  There  are  times 
when  both  mind  and  body  are  worn  down  by  the  severity 
of  daily  toil ;  when  the  grasshopper  is  a  burden,  and,  thirsty 
with  the  heat  of  labor,  the  spirit  longs  for  the  waters  of 
Shiloah  that  go  softly.  m  At  such  seasons  both  mind  and 
body  should  unbend  themselves ;  they  should  be  set  free 
from  the  yoke  of  their  customary  service,  and  thought  take 
some  other  direction  than  that  of  the  beaten,  dusty  thorough- 
fare of  business.  And  there  are  times,  too,  when  the  divinity 
stirs  within  us;  when  the  soul  abstracts  herself  from  the 
world,  and  the  slow  and  regular  motions  of  earthly  business 
do  not  keep  pace  with  the  heaven-directed  mind.  Then 
earth  lets  go  her  hold ;  the  soul  feels  herself  more  akin  to 
heaven ;  and  soaring  upward,  the  denizen  of  her  native  sky, 
she  "  begins  to  reason  like  herself,  and  to  discourse  in  a 
strain  above  mortality."  Call,  if  you  will,  such  thoughts 
and  feelings  the  dreams  of  the  imagination ;  yet  they  are  no 
unprofitable  dreams.  Such  moments  of  silence  and  medita- 
tion are  often  those  of  the  greatest  utility  to  ourselves  and 
others.  Yes,  we  would  dream  awhile,  that  the  spirit  is  not 
always  the  bondman  of  the  flesh ;  that  there  is  something 
immortal  in  us,  something  which,  amid  the  din  of  life,  urges 
us  to  aspire  after  the  attributes  of  a  more  spiritual  nature. 


3 14  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

Let  the  cares  and  business  of  the  world  sometimes  sleep,  for 
this  sleep  is  the  awakening  of  the  soul. 

To  fill  up  these  interludes  of  life  with  a  song,  that  shall 
soothe  our  worldly  passions  and  inspire  us  with  a  love  of 
heaven  and  virtue,  seems  to  be  the  peculiar  province  of 
poetry.  On  this  moral  influence  of  the  poetic  art,  there  is  a 
beautifully  written  passage  in  the  "  Defence  of  Poesy  "  : 

The  philosopher  showeth  you  the  way,  he  informeth  you  of  the 
particularities,  as  well  of  the  tediousness  of  the  way  and  of  the  pleas- 
ant lodging  you  shall  have  when  your  journey  is  ended,  as  of  the 
many  by-turnings  that  may  divert  you  from  your  way ;  but  this  is 
to  no  man,  but  to  him  that  will  read  him,  and  read  him  with  atten- 
tive, studious  painfulness  ;  which  constant  desire  whosoever  hath  in 
him  hath  already  passed  half  the  hardness  of  the  way,  and  there- 
fore is  beholden  to  the  philosopher  but  for  the  other  half.  Nay, 
truly,  learned  men  have  learnedly  thought  that,  where  once  reason 
hath  so  much  overmastered  passion  as  that  the  mind  hath  a  free 
desire  to  do  well,  the  inward  light  each  mind  hath  in  itself  is  as 
good  as  a  philosopher's  book ;  since  in  nature  we  know  it  is 
well  to  do  well,  and  what  is  well  and  what  is  evil,  although  not  in 
the  words  of  art  which  philosophers  bestow  upon  us ;  for  out  of 
natural  conceit  the  philosophers  drew  it ;  but  to  be  moved  to  do 
that  which  we  know,  or  to  be  moved  with  desire  to  know,  "  hoc 
opus,  hie  labor  est." 

Now,  therein,  of  all  sciences  (I  speak  still  of  human,  and  accord- 
ing to  the  human  conceit)  is  our  poet  the  monarch.  For  he  doth 
not  only  show  the  way,  but  giveth  so  sweet  a  prospect  into  the  way 
as  will  entice  any  man  to  enter  into  it ;  nay,  he  doth,  as  if  your  journey 
should  lie  through  a  fair  vineyard,  at  the  very  first  give  you  a  cluster 
of  grapes,  that  full  of  that  taste  you  may  long  to  pass  farther.  He 
beginneth  not  with  obscure  definitions,  which  must  blur  the  margin 
with  interpretations,  and  load  the  memory  with  doubtfulness,  but  he 
cometh  to  you  with  words  set  in  delightful  proportion,  either  accom- 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  3!5 

panied  with,  or  prepared  for,  the  well-enchanting  skill  of  music ;  and 
with  a  tale,  forsooth,  he  cometh  unto  you,  with  a  tale  which  holdeth 
children  from  play,  and  old  men  from  the  chimney-corner ;  and, 
pretending  no  more,  doth  intend  the  winning  of  the  mind  from 
wickedness  to  virtue. 

In  fine,  we  think  that  all  the  popular  objections  against 
poetry  may  be  not  only  satisfactorily  but  triumphantly  an- 
swered. They  are  all  founded  upon  its  abuse,  and  not  up- 
on its  natural  and  legitimate  tendencies.  Indeed,  popular 
judgment  has  seldom  fallen  into  a  greater  error  than  that  of 
supposing  that  poetry  must  necessarily,  and  from  its  very 
nature,  convey  false  and  therefore  injurious  impressions. 
The  error  lies  in  not  discriminating  between  what  is  true  to 
nature  and  what  is  true  to  fact.  From  the  very  nature  of 
things,  neither  poetry  nor  any  one  of  the  imitative  arts  can 
in  itself  be  false.  They  can  be  false  no  further  than,  by  the 
imperfection  of  human  skill,  they  convey  to  our  minds  im- 
perfect and  garbled  views  of  what  they  represent.  Hence  a 
painting  or  poetical  description  may  be  true  to  nature,  and 
yet  false  in  point  of  fact.  The  canvas  before  you  may  rep- 
resent a  scene  in  which  every  individual  feature  of  the 
landscape  shall  be  true  to  nature — the  tree,  the  waterfall, 
the  distant  mountain — every  object  there  shall  be  an  exact 
copy  of  an  original  that  has  a  real  existence,  and  yet  the 
scene  itself  may  be  absolutely  false  in  point  of  fact.  Such 
a  scene,  with  the  features  of  the  landscape  combined  pre- 
cisely in  the  way  represented,  may  exist  nowhere  but  in  the 
imagination  of  the  artist.  The  statue  of  the  Venus  de'  Me- 
dici is  the  perfection  of  female  beauty ;  and  every  indi- 
vidual feature  had  its  living  original.  Still,  the  statue  itself 
had  no  living  archetype.  It  is  true  to  nature,  but  it  is  not 


316  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

true  to  fact.  So  with  the  stage.  The  scene  represented, 
the  characters  introduced,  the  plot  of  the  piece,  and  the  ac- 
tion of  the  performers  may  all  be  conformable  to  nature, 
and  yet  not  be  conformable  to  any  preexisting  reality.  The 
characters  there  personified  may  never  have  existed ;  the 
events  represented  may  never  have  transpired.  And  so,  too, 
with  poetry.  The  scenes  and  events  it  describes,  the  char- 
acters and  passions  it  portrays,  may  all  be  natural  though 
not  real.  Thus,  in  a  certain  sense,  fiction  itself  may  be  true 
— true  to  the  nature  of  things,  and  consequently  true  in  the 
impressions  it  conveys.  And  hence  the  reason  why  fiction 
has  always  been  made  so  subservient  to  the  cause  of  truth. 

Allowing,  then,  that  poetry  is  nothing  but  fiction,  that  all 
it  describes  is  false  in  point  of  fact,  still  its  elements  have  a 
real  existence,  and  the  impressions  we  receive  can  be  erro- 
neous so  far  only  as  the  views  presented  to  the  mind  are 
garbled  and  false  to  nature.  And  this  is  a  fault  incident  to 
the  artist,  and  not  inherent  in  the  art  itself.  So  that  we 
may  fairly  conclude,  from  these  considerations,  that  the  nat- 
ural tendency  of  poetry  is  to  give  us  correct  moral  impres- 
sions, and  thereby  advance  the  cause  of  truth  and  the  im- 
provement of  society. 

There  is  another  very  important  view  of  the  subject 
arising  out  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  poetry,  and  its  inti- 
mate connection  with  individual  character  and  the  character 
of  society. 

The  origin  of  poetry  loses  itself  in  the  shades  of  a  re- 
mote and  fabulous  age,  of  which  we  have  only  vague  and 
uncertain  traditions.  Its  fountain,  like  that  of  the  river  of 
the  desert,  springs  up  in  a  distant  and  unknown  region,  the 
theme  of  visionary  story  and  the  subject  of  curious  specu- 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  3!7 

lation.  Doubtless,  however,  it  originated  amid  the  scenes  of 
pastoral  life  and  in  the  quiet  and  repose  of  a  golden  age. 
There  is  something  in  the  soft  melancholy  of  the  groves 
which  pervades  the  heart  and  kindles  the  imagination. 
Their  retirement  is  favorable  to  the  musings  of  the  poetic 
mind.  The  trees  that  waved  their  leafy  branches  to  the 
summer  wind  or  heaved  and  groaned  beneath  the  passing 
storm,  the  shadow  moving  on  the  grass,  the  bubbling  brook, 
the  insect  skimming  on  its  surface,  the  receding  valley  and 
the  distant  mountain — these  would  be  some  of  the  elements 
of  pastoral  song.  Its  subject  would  naturally  be  the  com- 
plaint of  a  shepherd  and  the  charms  of  some  gentle  shep- 
herdess— 

"  A  happy  soul,  that  all  the  way 
To  heaven  hath  a  summer's  day." 

It  is  natural,  too,  that  the  imagination,  familiar  with  the 
outward  world,  and  connecting  the  idea  of  the  changing 
seasons  and  the  spontaneous  fruits  of  the  earth  with  the 
agency  of  some  unknown  power  that  regulated  and  pro- 
duced them,  should  suggest  the  thought  of  presiding  deities, 
propitious  in  the  smiling  sky  and  adverse  in  the  storm.  The 
fountain  that  gushed  up  as  if  to  meet  the  thirsty  lip  was 
made  the  dwelling  of  a  nymph ;  the  grove  that  lent  its  shel- 
ter and  repose  from  the  heat  of  noon  became  the  abode  of 
dryads ;  a  god  presided  over  shepherds  and  their  flocks,  and 
a  goddess  shook  the  yellow  harvest  from  her  lap.  These 
deities  were  propitiated  by  songs  and  festive  rites.  And 
thus  poetry  added  new  charms  to  the  simplicity  and  repose 
of  bucolic  life,  and  the  poet  mingled  in  his  verse  the  de- 
lights of  rural  ease  and  the  praise  of  the  rural  deities  which 
bestowed  them. 


3i8  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

Such  was  poetry  in  those  happy  ages,  when,  camps  and 
courts  unknown,  life  was  itself  an  eclogue.  But  in  later 
days  it  sang  the  achievements  of  Grecian  and  Roman  he- 
roes, and  pealed  in  the  war-song  of  the  Gothic  Skald.  These 
early  essays  were  rude  and  unpolished.  As  nations  advanced 
in  civilization  and  refinement  poetry  advanced  with  them. 
In  each  successive  age,  it  became  the  image  of  their  thoughts 
and  feelings,  of  their  manners,  customs,  and  characters  ;  for 
poetry  is  but  the  warm  expression  of  the  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings of  a  people,  and  we  speak  of  it  as  being  national 
when  the  character  of  a  nation  shines  visibly  and  distinctly 
through  it. 

Thus,  for  example,  Castilian  poetry  is  characterized  by 
sounding  expressions,  and  that  pomp  and  majesty  so  pecu- 
liar to  Spanish  manners  and  character.  On  the  other  hand, 
English  poetry  possesses  in  a  high  degree  the  charms  of 
rural  and  moral  feeling;  it  flows  onward  like  a  woodland 
stream,  in  which  we  see  the  reflection  of  the  sylvan  land- 
scape and  of  the  heaven  above  us. 

It  is  from  this  intimate  connection  of  poetry  with  the 
manners,  customs,  and  characters  of  nations,  that  one  of  its 
highest  uses  is  drawn.  The  impressions  produced  by  poetry 
upon  national  character,  at  any  period,  are  again  reproduced, 
and  give  a  more  pronounced  and  individual  character  to  the 
poetry  of  a  subsequent  period.  And  hence  it  is  that  the 
poetry  of  a  nation  sometimes  throws  so  strong  a  light  upon 
the  page  of  its  history,  and  renders  luminous  those  obscure 
passages  which  often  baffle  the  long-searching  eye  of  stu- 
dious erudition.  In  this  view,  poetry  assumes  new  impor- 
tance with  all  who  search  for  historic  truth.  Besides,  the 
.view  of  the  various  fluctuations  of  the  human  mind,  as 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  319 

exhibited,  not  in  history,  but  in  the  poetry  of  successive 
epochs,  is  more  interesting,  and  less  liable  to  convey  erro- 
neous impressions,  than  any  record  of  mere  events.  The 
great  advantage  drawn  from  the  study  of  history  is  not  to 
treasure  up  in  the  mind  a  multitude  of  disconnected  facts, 
but  from  these  facts  to  derive  some  conclusions,  tending  to 
illustrate  the  movements  of  the  general  mind,  the  progress 
of  society,  the  manners,  customs,  and  institutions,  the  moral 
and  intellectual  character  of  mankind  in  different  nations,  at 
different  times,  and  under  the  operation  of  different  circum- 
stances. Historic  facts  are  chiefly  valuable  as  exhibiting 
intellectual  phenomena.  And,  so  far  as  poetry  exhibits 
these  phenomena  more  perfectly  and  distinctly  than  history 
does,  so  far  is  it  superior  to  history.  The  history  of  a  nation 
is  the  external  symbol  of  its  character ;  from  it  we  reason 
back  to  the  spirit  of  the  age  that  fashioned  its  shadowy  out- 
line. But  poetry  is  the  spirit  of  the  age  itself — embodied  in 
the  forms  of  language,  and  speaking  in  a  voice  that  is  au- 
dible to  the  external  as  well  as  the  internal  sense.  The  one 
makes  known  the  impulses  of  the  popular  mind,  through 
certain  events  resulting  from  them ;  the  other  displays  the 
more  immediate  presence  of  that  mind,  visible  in  its  action, 
and  presaging  those  events.  The  one  is  like  the  marks  left 
by  the  thunderstorm — the  blasted  tree — the  purified  atmos- 
phere ;  the  other  like  the  flash  from  the  bosom  of  the  cloud, 
or  the  voice  of  the  tempest,  announcing  its  approach.  The 
one  is  the  track  of  the  ocean  on  its  shore ;  the  other  the 
continual  movement  and  murmur  of  the  sea. 

Besides,  there  are  epochs  which  have  no  contempora- 
neous history ;  but  have  left  in  their  popular  poetry  pretty 
ample  materials  for  estimating  the  character  of  the  times. 


320 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 


The  events,  indeed,  therein  recorded  may  be  exaggerated 
facts,  or  vague  traditions,  or  inventions  entirely  apocryphal ; 
yet  they  faithfully  represent  the  spirit  of  the  ages  which  pro- 
duced them ;  they  contain  direct  allusions  and  incidental 
circumstances,  too  insignificant  in  themselves  to  have  been 
fictitious,  and  yet  on  that  very  account  the  most  important 
parts  of  the  poem  in  an  historical  point  of  view.  Such,  for  ex- 
ample, are  the  "  Nibelungen  Lied  "  in  Germany ;  the  "  Poema 
del  Cid  "  in  Spain  ;  and  the  "  Songs  of  the  Troubadours  "  in 
France.  Hence  poetry  comes  in  for  a  large  share  in  that 
high  eulogy  which,  in  the  true  spirit  of  the  scholar,  a  cele- 
brated German  critic  has  bestowed  upon  letters  :  "  If  we  con- 
sider literature  in  its  widest  sense,  as  the  voice  which  gives  ex- 
pression to  human  intellect — as  the  aggregate  mass  of  sym- 
bols, in  which  the  spirit  of  an  age  or  the  character  of  a  na- 
tion is  shadowed  forth,  then  indeed  a  great  and  various 
literature  is,  without  doubt,  the  most  valuable  possession  of 
which  any  nation  can  boast.* 

From  all  these  considerations,  we  are  forced  to  the  con- 
clusion that  poetry  is  a  subject  of  far  greater  importance  in 
itself,  and  in  its  bearing  upon  the  condition  of  society,  than  the 
majority  of  mankind  would  be  willing  to  allow.  We  heartily 
regret  that  this  opinion  is  not  a  more  prevailing  one  in  our 
land.  We  give  too  little  encouragement  to  works  of  imagi- 
nation and  taste.  The  vocation  of  the  poet  does  not  stand 
high  enough  in  our  esteem ;  we  are  too  cold  in  admiration, 
too  timid  in  praise.  The  poetic  lute  and  the  high-sounding 
lyre  are  much  too  often  and  too  generally  looked  upon  as 
the  baubles  of  effeminate  minds,  or  bells  and  rattles  to  please 

*  Schlegel,  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Literature,  vol.  i.,  lee.  vii. 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 


321 


the  ears  of  children.  The  prospect,  however,  brightens.  But 
a  short  time  ago,  not  a  poet  "  moved  the  wing,  or  opened 
the  mouth,  or  peeped  "  ;  and  now  we  have  a  host  of  them — 
three  or  four  good  ones,  and  three  or  four  hundred  poor 
ones.  This,  however,  we  will  not  stop  to  cavil  about  at 
present.  To  those  of  them  who  may  honor  us  by  reading 
our  article  we  would  whisper  this  request — that  they  should 
be  more  original,  and  withal  more  national.  It  seems  every 
way  important  that  now,  while  we  are  forming  our  literature, 
we  should  make  it  as  original,  characteristic,  and  national  as 
possible.  To  effect  this,  it  is  not  necessary  that  the  war-whoop 
should  ring  in  every  line,  and  every  page  be  rife  with  scalps, 
tomahawks,  and  wampum.  Shade  of  Tecumseh  forbid  ' 
The  whole  secret  lies  in  Sidney's  maxim — "  Look  in  thy 
heart  and  write."  For — 

"  Cantars  non  pot  gaire  valer. 
Si  d'inz  del  cor  no  mov  lo  chang."* 

Of  this  anon.  We  will  first  make  a  few  remarks  upon  the 
word  national,  as  applied  to  the  literature  of  a  country ;  for 
when  we  speak  of  a  national  poetry  we  do  not  employ  the  term 
in  that  vague  and  indefinite  way  in  which  many  writers  use  it. 
A  national  literature,  then,  in  the  widest  signification  of 
the  words,  embraces  every  mental  effort  made  by  the  inhabi- 
tants of  a  country,  through  the  medium  of  the  press.  Every 
book  written  by  a  citizen  of  a  country  belongs  to  its  national 
literature.  But  the  term  has  also  a  more  peculiar  and  ap- 
propriate definition ;  for,  when  we  say  that  the  literature  of 
a  country  is  national,  we  mean  that  it  bears  upon  it  the  stamp 
of  national  character.  We  refer  to  those  distinguishing 

*  "  The  poet's  song  is  little  worth, 

If  it  moveth  not  from  within  the  heart." 
21 


322  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

features  which  literature  receives  from  the  spirit  of  a  na- 
tion— from  its  scenery  and  climate,  its  historic  recollections, 
its  government,  its  various  institutions — from  all  those  na- 
tional peculiarities  which  are  the  result  of  no  positive  insti- 
tutions ;  and,  in  a^  word,  from  the  thousand  external  circum- 
stances, which  either  directly  or  indirectly  exert  an  influence 
upon  the  literature  of  a  nation,  and  give  it  a  marked  and 
individual  character,  distinct  from  that  of  the  literature  of 
other  nations. 

In  order  to  be  more  definite  and  more  easily  understood 
in  these  remarks,  we  will  here  offer  a  few  illustrations  of  the 
influence  of  external  causes  upon  the  character  of  the  mind, 
the  peculiar  habits  of  thought  and  feeling,  and  consequently 
the  general  complexion  of  literary  performances.  From  the 
causes  enumerated  above,  we  select  natural  scenery  and 
climate  as  being  among  the  most  obvious  in  their  influence 
upon  the  prevailing  tenor  of  poetic  composition.  Every  one 
who  is  acquainted  with  the  works  of  the  English  poets  must 
have  noted  that  a  moral  feeling  and  a  certain  rural  quiet 
and  repose  are  among  their  most  prominent  characteristics. 
The  features  of  their  native  landscape  are  transferred  to  the 
printed  page,  and  as  we  read  we  hear  the  warble  of  the  sky- 
lark— the  "hollow  murmuring  wind,  or  silver  rain."  The 
shadow  of  the  woodland  scene  lends  a  pensive  shadow  to 
the  ideal  world  of  poetry : 

"  Why  lure  me  from  these  pale  retreats  ? 
Why  rob  me  of  these  pensive  sweets  ? 
Can  Music's  voice,  can  Beauty's  eye, 
Can  Painting's  glowing  hand  supply, 
A  charm  so  suited  to  my  mind, 
As  blows  this  hollow  gust  of  wind, 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY,  323 

As  drops  this  little  weeping  rill, 
Soft  tinkling  down  the  moss-grown  hill, 
While  through  the  west,  where  sinks  the  crimson  day, 
Meek  Twilight  slowly  sails,  and  waves  her  banners  gray  ?  "  * 

In  the  same  richly  poetic  vein  are  the  following  lines 
from  Collins's  "  Ode  to  Evening  "  : 

"  Or  if  chill  blustering  winds,  or  driving  rain, 
Prevent  my  willing  feet,  be  mine  the  hut, 
That  from  the  mountain's  side, 
Views  wilds  and  swelling  floods, 

"  And  hamlets  brown,  and  dim-discovered  spires, 
And  hears  their  simple  bell,  and  marks  o'er  all 
The  dewy  fingers  draw 
The  gradual  dusky  veil." 

In  connection  with  the  concluding  lines  of  these  two 
extracts,  and  as  an  illustration  of  the  influence  of  climate  on 
the  character  of  poetry,  it  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the 
English  poets  excel  those  of  the  south  of  Europe  in  their 
descriptions  of  morning  and  evening.  They  dwell  with 
long  delight  and  frequent  repetition  upon  the  brightening 
glory  of  the  hour,  when  "  the  northern  wagoner  has  set  his 
sevenfold  teme  behind  the  stedfast  starre  " ;  and  upon  the 
milder  beauty  of  departing  day,  when  "the  bright-haired 
sun  sits  in  yon  western  tent."  What,  for  example,  can  be 
more  descriptive  of  the  vernal  freshness  of  a  morning  in 
May  than  the  often  quoted  song  in  "  Cymbeline  "  ? — 
"  Hark  !  hark  !  the  lark  at  heaven's  gate  sings, 

And  Phoebus  'gins  arise 
His  steeds  to  water  at  those  springs 

On  chaliced  flowers  that  lies  ; 

*  Mason's  Ode  to  a  Friend. 


324  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

And  winking  Mary-buds  begin 

To  ope  their  golden  eyes  ; 
With  everything  that  pretty  bin ; 

My  lady  sweet,  arise  ; 
Arise,  arise ! " 

How  full  of  poetic  feeling  and  imagery  is  the  following 
description  of  the  dawn  of  day,  taken  from  Fletcher's 
"  Faithful  Shepherdess  "  !— 

"  See,  the  day  begins  to  break, 
And  the  light  shoots  like  a  streak 
Of  subtle  fire,  the  wind  blows  cold, 
While  the  morning  doth  unfold ; 
Now  the  birds  begin  to  rouse, 
And  the  squirrel  from  the  boughs 
Leaps,  to  get  him  nuts  and  fruit ; 
The  early  lark  that  erst  was  mute, 
Carols  to  the  rising  day 
Many  a  note  and  many  a  lay." 

Still  more  remarkable  than  either  of  these  extracts,  as 
a  graphic  description  of  morning,  is  the  following  from 
Seattle's  "  Minstrel  "  : 

"  But  who  the  melodies  of  morn  can  tell  ? 
The  wild  brook  babbling  down  the  mountain's  side ; 
The  lowing  herd ;  the  sheepfold's  simple  bell ; 
The  pipe  of  early  shepherd  dim  descried 
In  the  lonely  valley ;  echoing  far  and  wide, 
The  clamorous  horn  along  the  cliffs  above ; 
The  hollow  murmur  of  the  ocean-tide ; 
The  hum  of  bees,  and  linnet's  lay  of  love, 
And  the  full  choir  that  wakes  the  universal  grove. 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  335 

"  The  cottage  curs  at  early  pilgrim  bark ; 
Crowned  with  her  pail,  the  tripping  milkmaid  sings  ; 
The  whistling  plowman  stalks  afield  ;  and  hark  ! 
Down  the  rough  slope  the  ponderous  wagon  rings  ; 
Through  rustling  corn  the  hare  astonished  springs ; 
Slow  tolls  the  village  clock  the  drowsy  hour ; 
The  partridge  bursts  away  on  whirring  wings  ; 
Deep  mourns  the  turtle  in  sequestered  bower ; 
And  shrill  lark  carols  clear  from  her  aerial  tower." 

Extracts, of  this  kind  we  might  multiply  almost  without 
number.  The  same  may  be  said  of  similar  ones,  descriptive 
of  the  gradual  approach  of  evening  and  the  close  of  day. 
But  we  have  already  quoted  enough  for  our  present  purpose. 
Now,  to  what  peculiarities  of  natural  scenery  and  climate 
may  we  trace  these  manifold  and  beautiful  descriptions, 
which  in  their  truth,  delicacy,  and  poetic  coloring  surpass 
all  the  pictures  of  the  kind  in  Tasso,  Guarini,  Boscan,  Gar- 
cilaso,  and,  in  a  word,  all  the  most  celebrated  poets  of  the 
south  of  Europe?  Doubtless,  to  the  rural  beauty  which 
pervades  the  English  landscape,  and  to  the  long  morning 
and  evening  twilight  of  a  northern  climate. 

Still,  with  all  this  taste  for  the  charms  of  rural  descrip- 
tion and  sylvan  song,  pastoral  poetry  has  never  been  much 
cultivated  nor  much  admired  in  England.  The  "  Arcadia  " 
of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  it  is  true,  enjoyed  a  temporary  celebrity, 
but  this  was,  doubtless,  owing  in  a  great  measure  to  the 
rank  of  its  author ;  and  though  the  pastorals  of  Pope  are  still 
read  and  praised,  their  reputation  belongs  in  part  to  their 
author's  youth  at  the  time  of  their  composition.  Nor  is  this 
remarkable.  For  though  the  love  of  rural  ease  is  character- 
istic of  the  English,  yet  the  rigors  of  their  climate  render 


326  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

their  habits  of  pastoral  life  anything  but  delightful.  In  the 
mind  of  an  Englishman,  the  snowy  fleece  is  more  intimately 
associated  with  the  weaver's  shuttle  than  with  the  shepherd's 
crook.  Horace  Walpole  has  a  humorous  passage  in  one  of 
his  letters  on  the  affectation  of  pastoral  habits  in  England. 
"  In  short,"  says  he,  "  every  summer  one  lives  in  a  state  of 
mutiny  and  murmur,  and  I  have  found  the  reason  ;  it  is  be- 
cause we  will  affect  to  have  a  summer,  and  we  have  no  title 
to  any  such  thing.  Our  poets  learned  their  trade  of  the 
Romans,  and  so  adopted  the  terms  of  their  masters.  They 
talk  of  shady  groves,  purling  streams,  and  cooling  breezes, 
and  we  get  sore  throats  and  agues  by  attempting  to  realize 
these  visions.  Master  Damon  writes  a  song,  and  invites 
Miss  Chloe  to  enjoy  the  cool  of  the  evening,  and  the  deuce 
a  bit  have  we  of  any  such  thing  as  a  cool  evening.  Zephyr 
is  a  northeast  wind,  that  makes  Damon  button  up  to  the 
chin,  and  pinches  Chloe's  nose  till  it  is  red  and  blue ;  and 
they  cry,  This  is  a  bad  sttmmer  ;  as  if  we  ever  had  any  other. 
The  best  sun  we  have  is  made  of  Newcastle  coal,  and  I  am 
determined  never  to  reckon  upon  any  other."  On  the  con- 
trary, the  poetry  of  the  Italians,  the  Spaniards,  and  the  Por- 
tuguese is  redolent  of  the  charms  of  pastoral  indolence  and 
enjoyment ;  for  they  inhabit  countries  in  which  pastoral  life 
is  a  reality  and  not  a  fiction,  where  the  winter's  sun  will  al- 
most make  you  seek  the  shade,  and  the  summer  nights  are 
mild  and  beautiful  in  the  open  air.  The  babbling  brook  and 
cooling  breeze  are  luxuries  in  a  southern  clime,  where  you 

"  See  the  sun  set,  sure  he'll  rise  to-morrow, 
Not  through  a  misty  morning  twinkling,  weak  as 

A  drunken  man's  dead  eye,  in  maudlin  sorrow, 
But  with  all  heaven  t'  himself." 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 


327 


A  love  of  indolence  and  a  warm  imagination  are  charac- 
teristic of  the  inhabitants  of  the  South.  These  are  natural 
effects  of  a  soft,  voluptuous  climate.  It  is  there  a  luxury  to 
let  the  body  lie  at  ease,  stretched  by  a  fountain  in  the  lazy 
stillness  of  a  summer  noon,  and  suffer  the  dreamy  fancy  to 
lose  itself  in  idle  reverie  and  give  a  form  to  the  wind  and  a 
spirit  to  the  shadow  and  the  leaf.  Hence  the  prevalence  of 
personification  and  the  exaggerations  of  figurative  language, 
so  characteristic  of  the  poetry  of  southern  nations.  As  an 
illustration,  take  the  following  beautiful  sonnet  from  the 
Spanish.  It  is  addressed  to  a  mountain  brook  : 

"  Laugh  of  the  mountain  !  lyre  of  bird  and  tree  ! 
Mirror  of  morn,  and  garniture  of  fields  ! 
The  soul  of  April,  that  so  gently  yields 
The  rose  and  jasmine  bloom,  leaps  wild  in  thee  ! 

"  Although,  where'er  thy  devious  current  strays, 
The  lap  of  earth  with  gold  and  silver  teems,' 
To  me  thy  clear  proceeding  brighter  seems 
Than  golden  sands,  that  charm  each  shepherd's  gaze. 

"  How  without  guile  thy  bosom,  all  transparent 
As  the  pure  crystal,  lets  the  curious  eye 
Thy  secrets  scan,  thy  smooth  round  pebbles  count ! 
How,  .without  malice  murmuring,  glides  thy  current ! 
O  sweet  simplicity  of  days  gone  by ! 
Thou  shunnest  the  haunts  of  man,  to  dwell  in  limpid  fount !  "  * 


*  "  Risa  del  monte,  de  las  aves  lira  ! 

pompa  del  prado,  espejo  de  la  aurora  ! 
alma  de  Abril,  espiritu  de  Flora 
por  quien  la  rosa  y  el  jazmin  espira  ! 


328  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

We  will  pursue  these  considerations  no  longer,  for  fear 
of  digressing  too  far.  What  we  have  already  said  will  illus- 
trate, perhaps  superficially,  but  sufficiently  for  our  present 
purpose,  the  influence  of  natural  scenery  and  climate  upon 
the  character  of  poetical  composition.  It  will  at  least  show 
that  in  speaking  of  this  influence  we  did  not  speak  at  ran- 
dom and  without  a  distinct  meaning.  Similar  and  much 
more  copious  illustrations  of  the  influence  of  various  other 
external  circumstances  on  national  literature  might  here  be 
given.  But  it  is  not  our  intention  to  go  into  details.  They 
will  naturally  suggest  themselves  to  the  mind  of  every  re- 
flecting reader. 

We  repeat,  then,  that  we  wish  our  native  poets  would 
give  a  more  national  character  to  their  writings.  In  order 
to  effect  this  they  have  only  to  write  more  naturally,  to  write 
from  their  own  feelings  and  impressions,  from  the  influence 
of  what  they  see  around  them,  and  not  from  any  precon- 
ceived notions  of  what  poetry  ought  to  be,  caught  by  read- 
ing many  books  and  imitating  many  models.  This  is  pecu- 
liarly true  in  descriptions  of  natural  scenery.  In  these  let 
us  have  no  more  skylarks  and  nightingales.  For  us  they 
only  warble  in  books.  A  painter  might  as  well  introduce 

"  Aunque  tu  curso  en  cuantos  pasos  gira 
tanta  jurisdiccion  argenta  y  dora, 
tu  claro  proceder  mas  me  enamora 
que  lo  que  en  ti  todo  pastor  admira. 

"  Cuan  sin  engano  tus  entranas  puras 
dejan  por  transparente  vidriera 
las  guijuelas  al  numero  patentes  ! 

"  Cuan  sin  malicia  Candida  murmuras  ! 
O  sencillez  de  aquella  edad  prim  era, 
huyes  del  hombre  y  vives  en  las  fuentes." 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  339 

an  elephant  or  a  rhinoceros  into  a  New  England  landscape. 
We  would  not  restrict  our  poets  in  the  choice  of  their  sub- 
jects or  the  scenes  of  their  story ;  but,  when  they  sing  under 
an  American  sky  and  describe  a  native  landscape,  let  the 
description  be  graphic,  as  if  it  had  been  seen  and  not  im- 
agined. We  wish,  too,  to  see  the  figures  and  imagery  of 
poetry  a  little  more  characteristic,  as  if  drawn  from  nature 
and  not  from  books.  Of  this  we  have  constantly  recurring 
examples  in  the  language  of  our  North  American  Indians. 
Our  readers  will  all  recollect  the  last  words  of  Pushmataha, 
the  Choctaw  chief,  who  died  at  Washington  in  the  year 
1824 :  "  I  shall  die,  but  you  will  return  to  your  brethren. 
As  you  go  along  the  paths  you  will  see  the  flowers  and  hear 
the  birds ;  but  Pushmataha  will  see  them  and  hear  them  no 
more.  When  you  come  to  your  home  they  will  ask  you, 
1  Where  is  Pushmataha  ? '  and  you  will  say  to  them,  '  He  is 
no  more.'  They  will  hear  the  tidings  like  the  sound  of  the 
fall  of  a  mighty  oak  in  the  stillness  of  the  wood."  More  at- 
tention on  the  part  of  our  writers  to  these  particulars  would 
give  a  new  and  delightful  expression  to  the  face  of  our 
poetry.  But  the  difficulty  is,  that  instead  of  coming  forward 
as  bold,  original  thinkers,  they  have  imbibed  the  degenerate 
spirit  of  modern  English  poetry.  They  have  hitherto  been 
imitators  either  of  decidedly  bad,  or  of  at  best  very  indiffer- 
ent models.  It  has  been  the  fashion  to  write  strong  lines — to 
aim  at  point  and  antithesis.  This  has  made  writers  turgid 
and  extravagant.  Instead  of  ideas  they  give  us  merely  the 
signs  of  ideas.  They  erect  a  great  bridge  of  words,  pom- 
pous and  imposing,  where  there  is  hardly  a  drop  of  thought 
to  trickle  beneath.  Is  not  he  who  thus  apostrophizes  the 
clouds,  "  Ye  posters  of  the  wakeless  air !  "  quite  as  extrava- 


33o  DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 

gant  as  the  Spanish  poet  who  calls  a  star  a  "burning  doub- 
loon of  the  celestial  bank  "  ?  ("  Doblon  ardiente  del  celeste 
banco !  ") 

This  spirit  of  imitation  has  spread  far  and  wide.  But  a 
few  years  ago  what  an  aping  of  Lord  Byron  exhibited  itself 
throughout  the  country !  It  was  not  an  imitation  of  the 
brighter  characteristics  of  his  intellect,  but  a  mimicry  of  his 
sullen  misanthropy  and  irreligious  gloom.  We  do  not  wish 
to  make  a  bugbear  of  Lord  Byron's  name,  nor  figuratively 
to  disturb  his  bones ;  still  we  can  not  but  express  our  belief 
that  no  writer  has  done  half  so  much  to  corrupt  the  literary 
taste  as  well  as  the  moral  principle  of  our  country  as  the 
author  of  "  Childe  Harold."  *  Minds  that  could  not  under- 
stand his  beauties  could  imitate  his  great  and  glaring  de- 
fects. Souls  that  could  not  fathom  his  depths  could  grasp 
the  straw  and  bubbles  that  floated  upon  the  agitated  sur- 
face, until  at  length  every  city,  town,  and  village  had  its  little 
Byron,  its  self-tormenting  scoffer  at  morality,  its  gloomy 

*  We  here  subjoin  Lord  Byron's  own  opinion  of  the  poetical  taste  of 
the  present  age.  It  is  from  a  letter  in  the  second  volume  of  Moore's 
"Life  of  Byron"  :  "With  regard  to  poetry  in  general,  I  am  convinced, 
the  more  I  think  of  it,  that  he  and  all  of  us — Scott,  Southey,  Words- 
worth, Moore,  Campbell,  I — are  all  in  the  wrong,  one  as  much  as  an- 
other ;  that  we  are  upon  a  wrong  revolutionary  poetical  system,  or  sys- 
tems, and  from  which  none  but  Rogers  and  Crabbe  are  free  ;  and  that 
the  present  and  next  generations  will  finally  be  of  this  opinion.  I  am 
the  more  confirmed  in  this  by  having  lately  gone  over  some  of  our 
classics,  particularly  Pope,  whom  I  tried  in  this  way :  I  took  Moore's 
poems  and  my  own  and  some  others,  and  went  over  them  side  by  side 
with  Pope's,  and  I  was  really  astonished  (I  ought  not  to  have  been  so) 
and  mortified  at  the  ineffable  distance  in  point  of  sense,  learning,  effect, 
and  even  imagination,  passion,  and  invention  between  the  Queen  Anne's 
man  and  us  of  the  Lower  Empire.  Depend  upon  it,  it  is  all  Horace 
then,  and  Claudian  now,  among  us  ;  and  if  I  had  to  begin  again,  I  would 
mold  myself  accordingly." 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  33I 

misanthropist  in  song.  Happily,  this  noxious  influence  has 
been  in  some  measure  checked  and  counteracted  by  the 
writings  of  Wordsworth,  whose  pure  and  gentle  philosophy 
has  been  gradually  gaining  the  ascendancy  over  the  bold 
and  visionary  speculations  of  an  unhealthy  imagination. 
The  sobriety,  and  if  we  may  use  the  expression,  the  repub- 
lican simplicity  of  his  poetry,  are  in  unison  with  our  moral 
and  political  doctrines.  But  even  Wordsworth,  with  all  his 
simplicity  of  diction  and  exquisite  moral  feeling,  is  a  very 
unsafe  model  for  imitation  ;  and  it  is  worth  while  to  observe 
how  invariably  those  who  have  imitated  him  have  fallen  into 
tedious  mannerism.  As  the  human  mind  is  so  constituted 
that  all  men  receive  to  a  greater  or  less  degree  a  complexion 
from  those  with  whom  they  are  conversant,  the  writer  who 
means  to  school  himself  to  poetic  composition — we  mean  so 
far  as  regards  style  and  diction — should  be  very  careful 
what  authors  he  studies.  He  should  leave  the  present  age 
and  go  back  to  the  olden  time.  He  should  make,  not  the 
writings  of  an  individual,  but  the  whole  body  of  English 
classical  literature  his  study.  There  is  a  strength  of  expres- 
sion, a  clearness,  and  force  and  raciness  of  thought  in  the 
elder  English  poets  which  we  may  look  for  in  vain  among 
those  who  flourish  in  these  days  of  verbiage.  Truly,  the  de- 
generacy of  modern  poetry  is  no  schoolboy  declamation! 
The  stream,  whose  fabled  fountain  gushes  from  the  Grecian 
mount,  flowed  brightly  through  those  ages,  when  the  souls 
of  men  stood  forth  in  the  rugged  freedom  of  nature  and 
gave  a  wild  and  romantic  character  to  the  ideal  landscape. 
But  in  these  practical  days,  whose  spirit  has  so  unsparingly 
leveled  to  the  even  surface  of  utility  the  bold  irregularities 
of  human  genius,  and  lopped  off  the  luxuriance  of  poetic 


332 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY. 


feeling  which  once  lent  its  grateful  shade  to  the  haunts  of 
song,  that  stream  has  spread  itself  into  stagnant  pools  which 
exhale  an  unhealthy  atmosphere,  while  the  party-colored 
bubbles  that  glitter  on  its  surface  show  the  corruption  from 
which  they  spring. 

Another  circumstance  which  tends  to  give  an  effeminate 
and  unmanly  character  to  our  literature  is  the  precocity  of 
our  writers.  Premature  exhibitions  of  talent  are  an  unstable 
foundation  to  build  a  national  literature  upon.  Roger  As- 
cham,  the  schoolmaster  of  princes,  and  for  the  sake  of  an- 
tithesis, we  suppose,  called  the  Prince  of  Schoolmasters,  has 
well  said  of  precocious  minds :  "  They  be  like  trees  that 
showe  forth  faire  blossoms  and  broad  leaves  in  spring-time, 
but  bring  out  small  and  not  long-lasting  fruit  in  harvest- 
time  ;  and  that  only  such  as  fall  and  rott  before  they  be  ripe, 
and  so  never  or  seldome  come  to  any  good  at  all."  It  is 
natural  that  the  young  should  be  enticed  by  the  wreaths  of 
literary  fame,  whose  hues  are  so  passing  beautiful  even  to 
the  more  sober-sighted,  and  whose  flowers  breathe  around 
them  such  exquisite  perfumes.  Many  are  deceived  into  a 
misconception  of  their  talents  by  the  indiscreet  and  indis- 
criminate praise  of  friends.  They  think  themselves  destined 
to  redeem  the  glory  of  their  age  and  country ;  to  shine  as 
"  bright  particular  stars  "  ;  but  in  reality  their  genius 

"  Is  like  the  glow-worm's  light  the  apes  so  wondered  at, 
Which,  when  they  gathered  sticks  and  laid  upon't, 
And  blew — and  blew— turned  tail  and  went  out  presently." 

We  have  set  forth  the  portrait  of  modern  poetry  in  rather 
gloomy  colors ;  for  we  really  think  that  the  greater  part  of 
what  is  published  in  this  book-writing  age  ought  in  justice 


DEFENSE  OF  POETRY.  333 

to  suffer  the  fate  of  the  children  of  Thetis,  whose  immortality 
was  tried  by  fire.  We  hope,  however,  that  ere  long  some 
one  of  our  most  gifted  bards  will  throw  his  fetters  off,  and, 
relying  on  himself  alone,  fathom  the  recesses  of  his  own  mind, 
and  bring  up  rich  pearls  from  the  secret  depths  of  thought. 

We  will  conclude  these  suggestions  to  our  native  poets 
by  quoting  Ben  Jonson's  "  Ode  to  Himself,"  which  we  ad- 
dress to  each  of  them  individually  : 

"  Where  do'st  thou  careless  lie 

Buried  in  ease  and  sloth  ? 
Knowledge,  that  sleeps,  doth  die  ; 
And  this  securitie 

It  is  the  common  moth 
That  eats  on  wits,  and  arts,  and  quite  destroys  them  both. 

"  Are  all  th'  Aonian  springs 

Dri'd  up  ?  lies  Thespia  waste  ? 
Doth  Clarius'  harp  want  strings, 
That  not  a  nymph  now  sings  ! 

Or  droop  they  as  disgrac't, 
To  see  their  seats  and  bowers  by  chatt'ring  pies  defac't  ? 

"  If  hence  thy  silence  be, 

As  'tis  too  just  a  cause, 
Let  this  thought  quicken  thee, 
Minds  that  are  great  and  free 

Should  not  on  fortune  pause ; 
'Tis  crowne  enough  to  virtue  still,  her  owne  applause. 

"  What  though  the  greedy  frie 
Be  taken  with  false  baytes 
Of  worded  balladrie, 
And  thinke  it  poesie  ? 

They  die  with  their  conceits, 
And  only  pitious  scorne  upon  their  folly  waites." 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE* 


THE  traveler  by  the  Eastern  Railroad,  from  Boston, 
reaches  in  less  than  an  hour  the  old  town  of  Salem,  Massa- 
chusetts. It  is  chiefly  composed  of  plain  wooden  houses, 
but  it  has  a  quaint  air  of  past  provincial  grandeur,  and  has 
indeed  been  an  important  commercial  town.  The  first 
American  ship  for  Calcutta  and  China  sailed  from  this  port ; 
and  Salem  ships  opened  our  trade  with  New  Holland  and 
the  South  Seas.  But  its  glory  has  long  since  departed,  with 
that  of  its  stately  and  respectable  neighbors,  Newburyport 
and  Portsmouth.  There  is  still,  however,  a  custom-house 
in  Salem,  there  are  wharves,  and  chandlers'  shops,  and  a 
faint  show  of  shipping,  and  an  air  of  marine  capacity  which 
no  apparent  result  justifies.  It  sits  upon  the  shore  like  an 
antiquated  sea-captain,  grave  and  silent,  in  tarpaulin  and 
duck  trousers,  idly  watching  the  ocean  upon  which  he  will 
never  sail  again. 

But  this  touching  aspect  of  age  and  lost  prosperity  merely 
serves  to  deepen  the  peculiar  impression  of  the  old  city, 
which  is  not  derived  from  its  former  commercial  importance, 
but  from  other  associations.  Salem  village  was  a  famous 

*  The  Works  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne.     Boston :  Ticknor  &  Fields. 
16  vols.     I2mo. 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.  335 

place  in  the  Puritan  annals.  The  tragedy  of  the  witchcraft 
tortures  and  murders  has  cast  upon  it  a  ghostly  spell,  from 
which  it  seems  never  to  have  escaped ;  and  even  the  so- 
journer  of  to-day,  as  he  loiters  along  the  shore  in  the  sun- 
niest morning  of  June,  will  sometimes  feel  an  icy  breath  in 
the  air,  chilling  the  very  marrow  of  his  bones.  Nor  is  he 
consoled  by  being  told  that  it  is  only  the  east  wind  ;  for  he 
can  not  help  believing  that  an  invisible  host  of  Puritan 
specters  have  breathed  upon  him,  revengeful,  as  he  poached 
upon  their  ancient  haunts. 

The  Puritan  spirit  was  neither  gracious  nor  lovely,  but 
nothing  softer  than  its  iron  hand  could  have  done  its  neces- 
sary work.  The  Puritan  character  was  narrow,  intolerant, 
and  exasperating.  The  forefathers  were  very  "  sour "  in 
the  estimation  of  Morton  and  his  merry  company  at  Mount 
Wollaston.  But,  for  all  that,  Bradstreet,  and  Carver,  and 
Winthrop,  were  better  forefathers  than  the  gay  Morton,  and 
the  Puritan  spirit  is  doubtless  the  moral  influence  of  modern 
civilization,  both  in  Old  and  New  England.  By  the  fruit 
let  the  seed  be  judged.  The  State  to  whose  rough  coast 
the  Mayflower  came,  and  in  which  the  Pilgrim  spirit  has 
been  most  active,  is  to-day  the  chief  of  all  human  societies, 
politically,  morally,  and  socially.  It  is  the  community  in 
which  the  average  of  well-being  is  higher  than  in  any  state 
we  know  in  history.  Puritan  though  it  be,  it  is  more  truly 
liberal  and  free  than  any  large  community  in  the  world. 
But  it  had  bleak  beginnings.  The  icy  shore,  the  somber 
pines,  the  stealthy  savages,  the  hard  soil,  the  unbending 
religious  austerity,  the  Scriptural  severity,  the  arrogant  vir- 
tues, the  angry  intolerance  of  contradiction — they  all  made 
a  narrow  strip  of  sad  civilization  between  the  pitiless  sea 


336 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 


and  the  remorseless  forests.  The  moral  and  physical  te- 
nacity which  is  wrestling  with  the  rebellion  was  toughened 
among  these  flinty  and  forbidding  rocks.  The  fig,  the 
pomegranate,  and  the  almond  would  not  grow  there,  nor 
the  nightingale  sing ;  but  nobler  men  than  its  children  the 
sun  never  shone  upon,  nor  has  the  heart  of  man  heard 
sweeter  music  than  the  voices  of  James  Otis  and  Samuel 
Adams.  Think  of  Plymouth  in  1620,  and  of  Massachusetts 
to-day  !  Out  of  strength  came  forth  sweetness. 

With  some  of  the  darkest  passages  in  Puritan  history 
this  old  town  of  Salem,  which  dozes  apparently  with  the 
most  peaceful  conscience  in  the  world,  is  identified,  and 
while  its  Fourth  of  July  bells  were  joyfully  ringing  sixty 
years  ago  Nathaniel  Hathorne  was  born.  He  subsequently 
chose  to  write  the  name  Hawthorne,  because  he  thought  he 
had  discovered  that  it  was  the  original  spelling.  In  the 
introduction  to  "The  Scarlet  Letter,"  Hawthorne  speaks  of 
his  ancestors  as  coming  from  Europe  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  establishing  themselves  in  Salem,  where  they 
served  the  state  and  propitiated  Heaven  by  joining  in  the 
persecution  of  Quakers  and  witches.  The  house  known 
as  the  Witch  House  is  still  standing  on  the  corner  of  Sum- 
mer and  Essex  Streets.  It  was  built  in  1642  by  Captain 
George  Corwin,  and  here  in  1692  many  of  the  unfortu- 
nates who  were  palpably  guilty  of  age  and  ugliness  were 
examined  by  the  Honorable  Jonathan  Curwin,  Major 
Gedney,  Captain  John  Higginson,  and  John  Hathorn,  Es- 
quire. 

The  name  of  this  last  worthy  occurs  in  one  of  the  first 
and  most  famous  of  the  witch  trials — that  of  "  Goodwife 
Cory,"  in  March,  1692,  only  a  month  after  the  beginning  of 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 


337 


the  delusion  at  the  house  of  the  minister  Parris.  Goodwife 
Cory  was  accused  by  ten  children,  of  whom  Elizabeth  Parris 
was  one  ;  they  declared  that  they  were  pinched  by  her,  and 
strangled,  and  that  she  brought  them  a  book  to  sign.  "  Mr. 
Hathorn,  a  magistrate  of  Salem,"  says  Robert  Calef,  in 
"  More  Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World,"  "  asked  her  why 
she  afflicted  these  children.  She  said  she  did  not  afflict 
them.  He  asked  her  who  did  then.  She  said,  e  I  do  not 
know ;  how  should  I  know  ?  '  She  said  they  were  poor, 
distracted  creatures,  and  no  heed  ought  to  be  given  to  what 
they  said.  Mr.  Hathorn  and  Mr.  Noyes  replied  that  it  was 
the  judgment  of  all  that  were  there  present  that  they  were 
bewitched,  and  only  she  (the  accused)  said  they  were  dis- 
tracted. She  was  accused  by  them  that  the  black  man 
whispered  to  her  in  her  ear  now  (while  she  was  upon  exami- 
nation), and  that  she  had  a  yellow  bird  that  did  use  to  suck 
between  her  fingers,  and  that  the  said  bird  did  suck  now  in 
the  assembly."  John  Hathorn  and  Jonathan  Curwin  were 
"  the  assistants  "  of  Salem  village,  and  held  most  of  the  ex- 
aminations and  issued  the  warrants.  Justice  Hathorn  was 
very  swift  in  judgment,  holding  every  accused  person  guilty 
in  every  particular.  When  poor  Jonathan  Gary,  of  Charles- 
town,  attended  his  wife  charged  with  witchcraft  before  Jus- 
tice Hathorn,  he  requested  that  he  might  hold  one  of  her 
hands,  "  but  it  was  denied  me.  Then  she  desired  me  to 
wipe  the  tears  from  her  eyes  and  the  sweat  from  her  face, 
which  I  did ;  then  she  desired  that  she  might  lean  herself 
on  me,  saying  she  should  faint.  Justice  Hathorn  replied 
she  had  strength  enough  to  torment  these  persons,  and  she 
should  have  strength  enough  to  stand.  I  speaking  some- 
thing against  their  cruel  proceedings,  they  commanded  me 

22 


338  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 

to  be  silent,  or  else  I  should  be  turned  out  of  the  room." 
What  a  piteous  picture  of  the  awful  Colonial  Inquisition 
and  the  village  Torquemada  !  What  a  grim  portrait  of  an 
ancestor  to  hang  in  your  memory,  and  to  trace  your  kin- 
dred to ! 

Hawthorne's  description  of  his  ancestors  in  the  Intro- 
duction to  "  The  Scarlet  Letter  "  is  very  delightful.  As 
their  representative,  he  declares  that  he  takes  shame  to  him- 
self for  their  sake,  on  account  of  these  relentless  persecu- 
tions ;  but  he  thinks  them  earnest  and  energetic.  "  From 
father  to  son,  for  above  a  hundred  years,  they  followed  the 
sea ;  a  gray-headed  shipmaster,  in  each  generation,  retiring 
from  the  quarter-deck  to  the  homestead,  while  a  boy  of 
fourteen  took  the  hereditary  place  before  the  mast,  con- 
fronting the  salt  spray  and  the  gale  which  had  blustered 
against  his  sire  and  grandsire.  The  boy  also,  in  due  time, 
passed  from  the  forecastle  to  the  cabin,  spent  a  tempestuous 
manhood,  and  returned  from  his  world-wanderings,  to  grow 
old,  and  die,  and  mingle  his  dust  with  the  natal  earth." 
Not  all,  however,  for  the  last  of  the  line  of  sailors,  Captain 
Nathaniel  Hathorne,  who  married  Elizabeth  Clarke  Man- 
ning, died  at  Calcutta  after  the  birth  of  three  children,  a  boy 
and  two  girls.  The  house  in  which  the  boy  was  born  is  still 
standing  upon  Union  Street,  which  leads  to  the  Long  Wharf, 
the  chief  seat  of  the  old  foreign  trade  of  Salem.  The  next 
house,  with  a  back  entrance  on  Union  Street,  is  the  Manning 
house,  where  many  years  of  the  young  Hawthorne's  life 
were  spent  in  the  care  of  his  uncle  Robert  Manning.  He 
lived  often  upon  an  estate  belonging  to  his  mother's  family, 
in  the  town  of  Raymond,  near  Sebago  Lake,  in  Maine.  The 
huge  house  there  was  called  Manning's  Folly,  and  is  now 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 


339 


said  to  be  used  as  a  meeting-house.  His  uncle  sent  Haw- 
thorne to  Bowdoin  College,  where  he  graduated  in  1825. 
A  correspondent  of  the  "  Boston  Daily  Advertiser,"  writing 
from  Bowdoin  at  the  late  Commencement,  says  that  he 
had  recently  found  "  in  an  old  drawer  "  some  papers  which 
proved  to  be  the  manuscript  "  parts  "  of  the  students  at  the 
Junior  exhibition  of  1824;  among  them  was  Hawthorne's 
"  De  Patribus  Conscriptis  Romanorum."  "  It  is  quite  brief," 
writes  the  correspondent,  "  but  it  is  really  curious  as  per- 
haps the  only  college  exercise  in  existence  of  the  great  tragic 
writer  of  our  day  (has  there  been  a  greater  since  Shake- 
speare ?).  The  last  sentence  is  as  follows ;  note  the  words 
which  I  put  in  italics  :  '  Augustus  equidem  antiquam  mag- 
nificentiam  patribus  reddidit,  sed  fulgor  tantum  fuit  sine  fer- 
vore.  Nunquam  in  republica  senatoribus  potestas  recuperata, 
postremum  species  etiam  amissa  est.'  On  the  same  occa- 
sion Longfellow  had  the  salutatory  oration  in  Latin — '  Oratio 
Latina — Anglici  Poetae.'" 

Hawthorne  has  given  us  a  charming  glimpse  of  himself 
as  a  college  boy  in  the  letter  to  his  fellow  student,  Horatio 
Bridge,  of  the  Navy,  whose  "  Journal  of  an  African  Cruiser  " 
he  afterward  edited  :  "  I  know  not  whence  your  faith  came  ; 
but  while  we  were  lads  together  at  a  country  college — gath- 
ering blueberries,  in  study-hours,  under  those  tall  academic 
pines ;  or  watching  the  great  logs  as  they  tumbled  along  the 
current  of  the  Androscoggin  ;  or  shooting  pigeons  and  gray- 
squirrels  in  the  woods ;  or  bat-fowling  in  the  summer  twi- 
light ;  or  catching  trouts  in  that  shadowy  little  stream  which, 
I  suppose,  is  still  wandering  riverward  through  the  forest — 
though  you  and  I  will  never  cast  a  line  in  it  again — two  idle 
lads,  in  short  (as  we  need  not  fear  to  acknowledge  now), 


34o  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 

doing  a  hundred  things  that  the  Faculty  never  heard  of,  or 
else  it  had  been  the  worse  for  us — still  it  was  your  prognos- 
tic of  your  friend's  destiny,  that  he  was  to  be  a  writer  of 
fiction."  From  this  sylvan  university  Hawthorne  came 
home  to  Salem ;  "  as  if,"  he  wrote  later,  "  Salem  were  for 
me  the  inevitable  center  of  the  universe." 

The  old  witch-hanging  city  had  no  weirder  product  than 
this  dark-haired  son.  He  has  certainly  given  it  an  interest 
which  it  must  otherwise  have  lacked ;  but  he  speaks  of  it 
with  small  affection,  considering  that  his  family  had  lived 
there  for  two  centuries.  "  An  unjoyous  attachment,"  he 
calls  it.  And,  to  tell  the  truth,  there  was  evidently  little 
love  lost  between  the  little  city  and  its  most  famous  citizen. 
Stories  still  float  in  the  social  gossip  of  the  town,  which 
represent  the  shy  author  as  inaccessible  to  all  invitations  to 
dinner  and  tea ;  and  while  the  pleasant  circle  awaited  his 
coming  in  the  drawing-room,  the  impracticable  man  was — at 
least  so  runs  the  tale — quietly  hobnobbing  with  companions 
to  whom  his  fame  was  unknown.  Those  who  coveted  him 
as  a  phoenix  could  never  get  him,  while  he  gave  himself 
freely  to  those  who  saw  in  him  only  a  placid  barn-door  fowl. 
The  sensitive  youth  was  a  recluse,  upon  whose  imagination 
had  fallen  the  gloomy  mystery  of  Puritan  life  and  character. 
Salem  was  the  inevitable  center  of  his  universe  more  truly 
than  he  thought.  The  mind  of  Justice  Hathorn's  descend- 
ant was  bewitched  by  the  fascination  of  a  certain  devil- 
ish subtlety  working  under  the  comeliest  aspects  in  human 
affairs.  It  overcame  him  with  strange  sympathy.  It  colored 
and  controlled  his  intellectual  life. 

Devoted  all  day  to  lonely  reverie  and  musing  upon  the 
obscurer  spiritual  passages  of  the  life  whose  monuments  he 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.  34I 

constantly  encountered,  that  musing  became  inevitably  mor- 
bid. With  the  creative  instinct  of  the  artist,  he  wrote  the 
wild  fancies  into  form  as  stories,  many  of  which,  when  written, 
he  threw  into  the  fire.  Then,  after  nightfall,  stealing  out 
from  his  room  into  the  silent  streets  of  Salem,  and  shadowy 
as  the  ghosts  with  which  to  his  susceptible  imagination  the 
dusky  town  was  thronged,  he  glided  beneath  the  house  in 
which  the  witch-trials  were  held,  or  across  the  moonlight  hill 
upon  which  the  witches  were  hung,  until  the  spell  was  com- 
plete. Nor  can  we  help  fancying  that,  after  the  murder  of 
old  Mr.  White  in  Salem,  which  happened  within  a  few  years 
after  his  return  from  college,  which  drew  from  Mr.  Webster 
his  most  famous  criminal  plea,  and  filled  a  shadowy  corner 
of  every  museum  in  New  England,  as  every  shivering  little 
man  of  that  time  remembers,  with  an  awful  reproduction  of 
the  scene  in  wax-figures,  with  real  sheets  on  the  bed,  and 
the  murderer  in  a  glazed  cap  stooping  over  to  deal  the  fatal 
blow — we  can  not  help  fancying  that  the  young  recluse  who 
walked  by  night,  the  wizard  whom  as  yet  none  knew,  hov- 
ered about  the  house,  gazing  at  the  windows  of  the  fatal 
chamber,  and  listening  in  horror  for  the  faint  whistle  of  the 
confederate  in  another  street. 

Three  years  after  he  graduated  in  1828  he  published 
anonymously  a  slight  romance  with  the  motto  from  Southey, 
"  Wilt  thou  go  with  me  ?  "  Hawthorne  never  acknowledged 
the  book,  and  it  is  now  seldom  found ;  but  it  shows  plainly 
the  natural  bent  of  his  mind.  It  is  a  dim,  dreamy  tale,  such 
as  a  Byron-struck  youth  of  the  time  might  have  written,  ex- 
cept for  that  startling  self-possession  of  style  and  cold  anal- 
ysis of  passion,  rather  than  sympathy  with  it,  which  showed 
no  imitation,  but  remarkable  original  power.  The  same 


342 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 


lurid  gloom  overhangs  it  that  shadows  all  his  works.  It  is  un- 
canny ;  the  figures  of  the  romance  are  not  persons,  they  are 
passions,  emotions,  spiritual  speculations.  So  the  "  Twice- 
told  Tales,"  that  seem  at  first  but  the  pleasant  fancies  of  a 
mild  recluse,  gradually  hold  the  mind  with  a  Lamia-like  fas- 
cination ;  and  the  author  says  truly  of  them,  in  the  preface 
of  1851  :  "Even  in  what  purport  to  be  pictures  of  actual 
life,  we  have  allegory  not  always  so  warmly  dressed  in  its 
habiliments  of  flesh  and  blood  as  to  be  taken  into  the  read- 
er's mind  without  a  shiver."  There  are  sunny  gleams  upon 
the  pages,  but  a  strange,  melancholy  chill  pervades  the  book. 
In  "The  Wedding  Knell,"  "The  Minister's  Black  Veil," 
"The  Gentle  Boy,"  "  Wakefield,"  "The  Prophetic  Pictures," 
"  The  Hollow  of  the  Three  Hills,"  "  Dr.  Heidegger's  Ex- 
periment," "  The  Ambitious  Guest,"  "  The  White  Old  Maid," 
"  Edward  Fane's  Rosebud,"  "  The  Lily's  Quest  "—or  in  the 
"  Legends  of  the  Province  House,"  where  the  courtly  pro- 
vincial state  of  governors  and  ladies  glitters  across  the  small, 
sad  New  England  world,  whose  very  baldness  jeers  it  to 
scorn — there  is  the  same  fateful  atmosphere  in  which  Goody 
Cloyse  might  at  any  moment  whisk  by  upon  her  broomstick, 
and  in  which  the  startled  heart  stands  still  with  unspeakable 
terror. 

The  spell  of  mysterious  horror  which  kindled  Haw- 
thorne's imagination  was  a  test  of  the  character  of  his 
genius.  The  mind  of  this  child  of  witch-haunted  Salem 
loved  to  hover  between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural, 
and  sought  to  tread  the  almost  imperceptible  and  doubtful 
line  of  contact.  He  instinctively  sketched  the  phantoms 
that  have  the  figures  of  men,  but  are  not  human ;  the  elu- 
sive, shadowy  scenery  which,  like  that  of  Gustave  Dora's 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.  343 

pictures,  is  Nature  sympathizing  in  her  forms  and  aspects 
with  the  emotions  of  terror  or  awe  which  the  tale  excites. 
His  genius  broods  entranced  over  the  evanescent  phantas- 
magoria of  the  vague  debatable  land  in  which  the  realities 
of  experience  blend  with  ghostly  doubts  and  wonders. 

But  from  its  poisonous  flowers  what  a  wondrous  perfume 
he  distilled !  Through  his  magic  reed  into  what  penetrating 
melody  he  blew  that  deathly  air !  His  relentless  fancy 
seemed  to  seek  a  sin  that  was  hopeless,  a  cruel  despair  that 
no  faith  could  throw  off.  Yet  his  naive  and  well-poised 
genius  hung  over  the  gulf  of  blackness  and  peered  into  the 
pit  with  the  steady  nerve  and  simple  face  of  a  boy.  The 
mind  of  the  reader  follows  him  with  an  aching  wonder  and 
admiration,  as  the  bewildered  old  mother  forester  watched 
Undine's  gambols.  As  Hawthorne  describes  Miriam  in 
"  The  Marble  Faun,"  so  may  the  character  of  his  genius  be 
most  truly  indicated.  Miriam,  the  reader  will  remember, 
turns  to  Hilda  and  Kenyon  for  sympathy.  "  Yet  it  was  to 
little  purpose  that  she  approached  the  edge  of  the  voiceless 
gulf  between  herself  and  them.  Standing  on  the  utmost 
verge  of  that  dark  chasm,  she  might  stretch  out  her  hand 
and  never  clasp  a  hand  of  theirs ;  she  might  strive  to  call 
out,  '  Help,  friends !  help  ! '  but,  as  with  dreamers  when 
they  shout,  her  voice  would  perish  inaudibly  in  the  remote- 
ness that  seemed  such  a  little  way.  This  perception  of  an 
infinite,  shivering  solitude,  amid  which  we  can  not  come 
close  enough  to  human  beings  to  be  warmed  by  them,  and 
where  they  turn  to  cold,  chilly  shapes  of  mist,  is  one  of  the 
most  forlorn  results  of  any  accident,  misfortune,  crime,  or 
peculiarity  of  character  that  puts  an  individual  ajar  with  the 
world." 


344 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 


Thus  it  was  because  the  early  New  England  life  made  so 
much  larger  account  of  the  supernatural  element  than  any 
other  modern  civilized  society,  that  the  man  whose  blood 
had  run  in  its  veins  instinctively  turned  to  it.  But  beyond 
this  alluring  spell  of  its  darker  and  obscurer  individual  ex- 
perience, it  seems  neither  to  have  touched  his  imagination 
nor  even  to  have  aroused  his  interest.  To  Walter  Scott  the 
romance  of  feudalism  was  precious,  for  the  sake  of  feudal- 
ism itself,  in  which  he  believed  with  all  his  soul,  and  for 
that  of  the  heroic  old  feudal  figures  which  he  honored.  He 
was  a  Tory  in  every  particle  of  his  frame,  and  his  genius 
made  him  the  poet  of  Toryism.  But  Hawthorne  had  appar- 
ently no  especial  political,  religious,  or  patriotic  affinity  with 
the  spirit  which  inspired  him.  It  was  solely  a  fascination 
of  the  intellect.  And  although  he  is  distinctively  the  poet 
of  the  Puritans,  although  it  is  to  his  genius  that  we  shall 
always  owe  that  image  of  them  which  the  power  of  "  The 
Scarlet  Letter  "  has  imprinted  upon  literature,  and  doubtless 
henceforth  upon  historical  interpretation,  yet  what  an  im- 
perfect picture  of  that  life  it  is !  All  its  stern  and  melan- 
choly romance  is  there— its  picturesque  gloom  and  intense 
passion ;  but  upon  those  quivering  pages,  as  in  every  pas- 
sage of  his  stories  drawn  from  that  spirit,  there  seems  to  be 
wanting  a  deep,  complete,  sympathetic  appreciation  of  the 
fine  moral  heroism,  the  spiritual  grandeur,  which  overhung 
that  gloomy  life,  as  a  delicate  purple  mist  suffuses  in  summer 
twilights  the  bald  crags  of  the  crystal  hills.  It  is  the  glare 
of  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  itself,  and  all  that  it  luridly  re- 
veals and  weirdly  implies,  which  produced  the  tale.  It  was 
not  beauty  in  itself,  nor  deformity,  not  virtue  nor  vice, 
which  engaged  the  author's  deepest  sympathy.  It  was  the 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.  345 

occult  relation  between  the  two.  Thus  while  the  Puritans 
were  of  all  men  pious,  it  was  the  instinct  of  Hawthorne's 
genius  to  search  out  and  trace  with  terrible  tenacity  the 
dark  and  devious  thread  of  sin  in  their  lives. 

Human  life  and  character,  whether  in  New  England  two 
hundred  years  ago  or  in  Italy  to-day,  interested  him  only  as 
they  were  touched  by  this  glamour  of  somber  spiritual  mys- 
tery ;  and  the  attraction  pursued  him  in  every  form  in  which 
it  appeared.  It  is  as  apparent  in  the  most  perfect  of  his 
smaller  tales,  "  Rappaccini's  Daughter,"  as  in  "  The  Scarlet 
Letter,"  "  The  Blithedale  Romance,"  "  The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables,"  and  "  The  Marble  Faun."  You  may  open 
almost  at  random,  and  you  are  as  sure  to  find  it  as  to  hear 
the  ripple  in  Mozart's  music  or  the  pathetic  minor  in  a  Nea- 
politan melody.  Take,  for  instance,  "The  Birth-Mark," 
which  we  might  call  the  best  of  the  smaller  stories  if  we  had 
not  just  said  the  same  thing  of  "  Rappaccini's  Daughter  " — 
for  so  even  and  complete  is  Hawthorne's  power  that,  with 
few  exceptions,  each  work  of  his,  like  Benvenuto's,  seems 
the  most  characteristic  and  felicitous.  In  this  story  a 
scholar  marries  a  beautiful  woman  upon  whose  face  is  a 
mark  which  has  hitherto  seemed  to  be  only  a  greater  charm. 
Yet  in  one  so  lovely  the  husband  declares  that,  although  it 
is  the  slightest  possible  defect,  it  is  yet  the  mark  of  earthly 
imperfection,  and  he  proceeds  to  lavish  all  the  resources  of 
science  to  procure  its  removal.  But  it  will  not  disappear; 
and  at  last  he  tells  her  that  the  crimson  hand  "  has  clutched 
its  grasp  "  into  her  very  being,  and  that  there  is  mortal  dan- 
ger in  trying  the  only  means  of  removal  that  remains.  She 
insists  that  it  shall  be  tried.  It  succeeds ;  but  it  removes 
the  stain  and  her  life  together.  So  in  "  Rappaccini's  Daugh- 


346  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 

ter."  The  old  philosopher  nourishes  his  beautiful  child 
upon  the  poisonous  breath  of  a  flower.  She  loves,  and  her 
lover  is  likewise  bewitched.  In  trying  to  break  the  spell, 
she  drinks  an  antidote  which  kills  her.  The  point  of  inter- 
est in  both  stories  is  the  subtile  connection,  in  the  first,  be- 
tween the  beauty  of  Georgiana  and  the  taint  of  the  birth- 
mark ;  and,  in  the  second,  the  loveliness  of  Beatrice  and  the 
poison  of  the  blossom. 

This,  also,  is  the  key  of  his  last  romance,  "  The  Marble 
Faun,"  one  of  the  most  perfect  works  of  art  in  literature, 
whose  marvelous  spell  begins  with  the  very  opening  words  : 
"  Four  individuals,  in  whose  fortunes  we  should  be  glad  to 
interest  the  reader,  happened  to  be  standing  in  one  of  the 
saloons  of  the  sculpture  gallery  in  the  Capitol  at  Rome." 
When  these  words  are  read,  the  mind  familiar  with  Haw- 
thorne is  already  enthralled.  What  a  journey  is  beginning, 
not  a  step  of  which  is  trodden,  and  yet  the  heart  palpitates 
with  apprehension  !  Through  what  delicate,  rosy  lights  of 
love,  and  soft,  shimmering  humor,  and  hopes  and  doubts 
and  vanishing  delights,  that  journey  will  proceed,  on  and  on 
into  utter  gloom !  And  it  does  so,  although  "  Hilda  had  a 
hopeful  soul,  and  saw  sunlight  on  the  mountain-tops."  It 
does  so,  because  Miriam  and  Donatello  are  the  figures 
which  interest  us  most  profoundly,  and  they  are  both  lost  in 
the  shadow.  Donatello,  indeed,  is  the  true  center  of  inter- 
est, as  he  is  one  of  the  most  striking  creations  of  genius. 
But  the  perplexing  charm  of  Donatello,  what  is  it  but  the 
doubt  that  does  not  dare  to  breathe  itself,  the  appalled  won- 
der whether,  if  the  breeze  should  lift  those  clustering  locks 
a  little  higher,  he  would  prove  to  be  faun  or  man  ?  It  never 
does  lift  them ;  the  doubt  is  never  solved,  but  it  is  always 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.  347 

suggested.  The  mystery  of  a  partial  humanity,  morally  irre- 
sponsible but  humanly  conscious,  haunts  the  entrancing 
page.  It  draws  us  irresistibly  on.  But  as  the  cloud  closes 
around  the  lithe  figure  of  Donatello,  we  hear  again  from  its 
hidden  folds  the  words  of  "  The  Birth-Mark  "  :  "  Thus  ever 
does  the  gross  fatality  of  earth  exult  in  its  invariable  tri- 
umph over  the  immortal  essence,  which,  in  this  dim  sphere 
of  half-development,  demands  the  completeness  of  a  higher 
state."  Or  still  more  sadly,  the  mysterious  youth,  half  van- 
ishing from  our  sympathy,  seems  to  murmur,  with  Beatrice 
Rappaccini,  "And  still  as  she  spoke,  she  kept  her  hand 
upon  her  heart — '  Wherefore  didst  thou  inflict  this  miserable 
doom  upon  my  child  ? ' ' 

We  have  left  the  story  of  Hawthorne's  life  sadly  behind. 
But  his  life  had  no  more  remarkable  events  than  holding  of- 
fice in  the  Boston  Custom-House  under  Mr.  Bancroft  as  col- 
lector ;  working  for  some  time  with  the  Brook  Farmers, 
from  whom  he  soon  separated,  not  altogether  amicably; 
marrying  and  living  in  the  old  manse  at  Concord  ;  returning 
to  the  Custom-House  in  Salem  as  surveyor ;  then  going  to 
Lenox,  in  Berkshire,  where  he  lived  in  what  he  called  "  the 
ugliest  little  old  red  farmhouse  that  you  ever  saw,"  and 
where  the  story  is  told  of  his  shyness,  that,  if  he  saw  anybody 
coming  along  the  road  whom  he  must  probably  pass,  he 
would  jump  over  the  wall  into  the  pasture,  and  so  give  the 
stranger  a  wide  berth ;  back  again  to  Concord ;  then  to 
Liverpool  as  consul ;  traveling  in  Europe  afterward,  and 
home  at  last  and  for  ever,  to  "  The  Wayside,"  under  the 
Concord  hill.  "  The  hillside,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend  in  1852, 
"  is  covered  chiefly  with  locust-trees,  which  come  into  luxu- 
riant blossom  in  the  month  of  June,  and  look  and  smell  very 


348  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 

sweetly,  intermixed  with  a  few  young  elms  and  some  white- 
pines  and  infant  oaks,  the  whole  forming  rather  a  thicket 
than  a  wood.  Nevertheless,  there  is  some  very  good  shade 
to  be  found  there ;  I  spend  delectable  hours  there  in  the 
hottest  part  of  the  day,  stretched  out  at  my  lazy  length  with 
a  book  in  my  hand  or  an  unwritten  book  in  my  thoughts. 
There  is  almost  always  a  breeze  stirring  along  the  side  or 
brow  of  the  hill." 

It  is  not  strange,  certainly,  that  a  man  such  as  has  been 
described,  of  a  morbid  shyness,  the  path  of  whose  genius 
diverged  always  out  of  the  sun  into  the  darkest  shade,  and 
to  whom  human  beings  were  merely  psychological  phe- 
nomena, should  have  been  accounted  ungenial,  and  some- 
times even  hard,  cold,  and  perverse.  From  the  bent  of  his 
intellectual  temperament  it  happens  that  in  his  simplest  and 
sweetest  passages  he  still  seems  to  be  studying  and  curiously 
observing,  rather  than  sympathizing.  You  can  not  help  feel- 
ing constantly  that  the  author  is  looking  askance  both  at  his 
characters  and  you,  the  reader ;  and  many  a  young  and  fresh 
mind  is  troubled  strangely  by  his  books,  as  if  it  were  aware 
of  a  half-Mephistophelean  smile  upon  the  page.  Nor  is  this 
impression  altogether  removed  by  the  remarkable  familiarity 
of  his  personal  disclosures.  There  was  never  a  man  more 
shrinkingly  retiring,  yet  surely  never  was  an  author  more 
naively  frank.  He  is  willing  that  you  should  know  all  that 
a  man  may  fairly  reveal  of  himself.  The  great  interior  story 
he  does  not  tell,  of  course,  but  the  introduction  to  the 
"  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,"  the  opening  chapter  of  "  The 
Scarlet  Letter,"  and  the  "  Consular  Experiences,"  with  much 
of  the  rest  of  "  Our  Old  Home,"  are  as  intimate  and  explicit 
chapters  of  autobiography  as  can  be  found.  Nor  would  it 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 


349 


be  easy  to  find  anywhere  a  more  perfect  idyl  than  that  intro- 
ductory chapter  of  the  "  Mosses."  Its  charm  is  perennial 
and  indescribable  ;  and  why  should  it  not  fye,  since  it  was 
written  at  a  time  in  which,  as  he  says,  "  I  was  happy  "  ?  It 
is,  perhaps,  the  most  softly- hued  and  exquisite  work  of  his 
pen.  So  the  sketch  of  "  The  Custom-House,"  although  pref- 
atory to  that  most  tragically  powerful  of  romances,  "  The 
Scarlet  Letter,"  is  an  incessant  play  of  the  shyest  and  most 
airy  humor.  It  is  like  the  warbling  of  bobolinks  before  a 
thunder-burst.  How  many  other  men,  however  unreserved 
with  the  pen,  would  be  likely  to  dare  to  paint,  with  the  fidel- 
ity of  Teniers  and  the  simplicity  of  Fra  Angelico,  a  picture 
of  the  office  and  the  companions  in  which  and  with  whom 
they  did  their  daily  work  ?  The  Surveyor  of  Customs  in  the 
port  of  Salem  treated  the  town  of  Salem,  in  which  he  lived 
and  discharged  his  daily  task,  as  if  it  had  been,  with  all  its 
people,  as  vague  and  remote  a  spot  as  the  town  of  which  he 
was  about  to  treat  in  the  story.  He  commented  upon  the 
place  and  the  people  as  modern  travelers  in  Pompeii  discuss 
the  ancient  town.  It  made  a  great  scandal.  He  was  ac- 
cused of  depicting  with  unpardonable  severity  worthy  folks, 
whose  friends  were  sorely  pained  and  indignant.  But  he 
wrote  such  sketches  as  he  wrote  his  stories.  He  treated  his 
companions  as  he  treated  himself  and  all  the  personages  in 
history  or  experience  with  which  he  dealt,  merely  as  phe- 
nomena to  be  analyzed  and  described,  with  no  more  private 
malice  or  personal  emotion  than  the  sun,  which  would  have 
photographed  them,  warts  and  all. 

Thus  it  was  that  the  great  currents  of  human  sympathy 
never  swept  him  away.  The  character  of  his  genius  isolated 
him,  and  he  stood  aloof  from  the  common  interests.  Intent 


350  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 

upon  studying  men  in  certain  aspects,  he  cared  little  for 
man ;  and  the  high  tides  of  collective  emotion  among  his 
fellows  left  him  dry  and  untouched.  So  he  beholds  and  de- 
scribes the  generous  impulse  of  humanity  with  skeptical 
courtesy  rather  than  with  hopeful  cordiality. 

He  does  not  chide  you  if  you  spend  effort  and  life  itself 
in  the  ardent  van  of  progress,  but  he  asks  simply,  "  Is  six  so 
much  better  than  half  a  dozen  ?  "  He  will  not  quarrel  with 
you  if  you  expect  the  millennium  to-morrow.  He  only  says, 
with  that  glimmering  smile,  "  So  soon  ?  "  Yet  in  all  this 
there  was  no  shadow  of  spiritual  pride.  Nay,  so  far  from 
this,  that  the  tranquil  and  pervasive  sadness  of  all  Haw- 
thorne's writings,  the  kind  of  heart-ache  that  they  leave  be- 
hind, seems  to  spring  from  the  fact  that  his  nature  was  related 
to  the  moral  world,  as  his  own  Donatello  was  to  the  human. 
"  So  alert,  so  alluring,  so  noble,"  muses  the  heart  as  we  climb 
the  Apennines  toward  the  tower  of  Monte  Beni— "  alas !  is 
he  human  ?  "  it  whispers,  with  a  pang  of  doubt. 

How  this  directed  his  choice  of  subjects,  and  affected 
his  treatment  of  them,  when  drawn  from  early  history,  we 
have  already  seen.  It  is  not,  therefore,  surprising  that  the 
history  into  which  he  was  born  interested  him  only  in  the 
same  way. 

When  he  went  to  Europe  as  consul,  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  "  was  already  published,  and  the  country  shook  with 
the  fierce  debate  which  involved  its  life.  Yet  eight  years 
later  Hawthorne  wrote  with  calm  ennui :  "  No  author, 
without  a  trial,  can  conceive  of  the  difficulty  of  writing  a 
romance  about  a  country  where  there  is  no  shadow,  no  an- 
tiquity, no  mystery,  no  picturesque  and  gloomy  wrong,  nor 
anything  but  a  commonplace  prosperity,  in  broad  and  simple 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.  351 

daylight,  as  is  happily  the  case  with  my  dear  native  land." 
Is  crime  never  romantic,  then,  until  distance  ennobles  it  ? 
Or  were  the  tragedies  of  Puritan  life  so  terrible  that  the  im- 
agination could  not  help  kindling,  while  the  pangs  of  the 
plantation  are  superficial  and  commonplace  ?  Charlotte 
Bronte,  Dickens,  and  Thackeray  were  able  to  find  a  shadow 
even  in  "merrie  England."  But  our  great  romancer  looked 
at  the  American  life  of  his  time  with  these  marvelous  eyes, 
and  could  see  only  monotonous  sunshine.  That  the  devil, 
in  the  form  of  an  elderly  man  clad  in  grave  and  decent  at- 
tire, should  lead  astray  the  saints  of  Salem  village,  two  cen- 
turies ago,  and  confuse  right  and  wrong  in  the  mind  of 
Goodman  Brown,  was  something  that  excited  his  imagina- 
tion, and  produced  one  of  his  weirdest  stories.  But  that  the 
same  devil,  clad  in  a  somber  sophism,  was  confusing  the 
sentiment  of  right  and  wrong  in  the  mind  of  his  own  coun- 
trymen he  did  not  even  guess.  The  monotonous  sunshine 
disappeared  in  the  blackest  storm.  The  commonplace  pros- 
perity ended  in  tremendous  war.  What  other  man  of  equal 
power,  who  was  not  intellectually  constituted  precisely  as 
Hawthorne  was,  could  have  stood  merely  perplexed  and  be- 
wildered, harassed  by  the  inability  of  positive  sympathy,  in 
the  vast  conflict  which  tosses  us  all  in  its  terrible  vortex  ? 

In  political  theories  and  in  an  abstract  view  of  war  men 
may  differ.  But  this  war  is  not  to  be  dismissed  as  a  political 
difference.  Here  is  an  attempt  to  destroy  the  government 
of  a  country,  not  because  it  oppressed  any  man,  but  because 
its  evident  tendency  was  to  secure  universal  justice  under 
law.  It  is  therefore  a  conspiracy  against  human  nature. 
Civilization  itself  is  at  stake ;  and  the  warm  blood  of  the 
noblest  youth  is  everywhere  flowing  in  as  sacred  a  cause  as 


352  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 

history  records — flowing  not  merely  to  maintain  a  certain 
form  of  government,  but  to  vindicate  the  rights  of  human 
nature.  Shall  there  not  be  sorrow  and  pain,  if  a  friend  is 
merely  impatient  or  confounded  by  it — if  he  sees  in  it  only 
danger  or  doubt,  and  not  hope  for  the  right — or  if  he  seem  to 
insinuate  that  it  would  have  been  better  if  the  war  had  been 
avoided,  even  at  that  countless  cost  to  human  welfare  by 
which  alone  the  avoidance  was  possible  ? 

Yet,  if  the  view  of  Hawthorne's  mental  constitution 
which  has  been '  suggested  be  correct,  this  attitude  of  his, 
however  deeply  it  may  be  regretted,  can  hardly  deserve 
moral  condemnation.  He  knew  perfectly  well  that  if  a  man 
has  no  ear  for  music  he  had  better  not  try  to  sing.  But  the 
danger  with  such  men  is,  that  they  are  apt  to  doubt  if  music 
itself  be  not  a  vain  delusion.  This  danger  Hawthorne  es- 
caped. There  is  none  of  the  shallow  persiflage  of  the 
skeptic  in  his  tone,  nor  any  affectation  of  cosmopolitan  su- 
periority. Mr.  Edward  Dicey,  in  his  interesting  reminis- 
cences of  Hawthorne,  published  in  "  Macmillan's  Maga- 
zine," illustrates  this  very  happily  : 

To  make  his  position  intelligible,  let  me  repeat  an  anecdote 
which  was  told  me  by  a  very  near  friend  of  his  and  mine,  who  had 
heard  it  from  President  Pierce  himself.  Frank  Pierce  had  been,  and 
was  to  the  day  of  Hawthorne's  death,  one  of  the  oldest  of  his 
friends.  At  the  time  of  the  Presidential  election  of  1856,  Haw- 
thorne, for  once,  took  part  in  politics,  wrote  a  pamphlet  in  favor  of 
his  friend,  and  took  a  most  unusual  interest  in  his  success.  When 
the  result  of  the  nomination  was  known,  and  Pierce  was  President- 
elect, Hawthorne  was  among  the  first  to  come  and  wish  him  joy. 
He  sat  down  in  the  room  moodily  and  silently,  as  he  was  wont  when 
anything  troubled  him ;  then,  without  speaking  a  word,  he  shook 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.  353 

Pierce  warmly  by  the  hand,  and  at  last  remarked,  "  Ah,  Frank,  what 
a  pity !  "  The  moment  the  victory  was  won  that  timid,  hesitating 
mind  saw  the  evils  of  the  successful  course — the  advantages  of  the 
one  which  had  not  been  followed.  So  it  was  always.  Of  two  lines 
of  action,  he  was  perpetually  in  doubt  which  was  the  best ;  and  so,  be- 
tween the  two,  he  always  inclined  to  letting  things  remain  as  they  are. 
Nobody  disliked  slavery  more  cordially  than  he  did  ;  and  yet  the 
difficulty  of  what  was  to  be  done  with  the  slaves  weighed  constantly 
upon  his  mind.  He  told  me  once,  that,  while  he  had  been  consul 
at  Liverpool,  a  vessel  arrived  there  with  a  number  of  negro  sailors, 
who  had  been  brought  from  slave  States,  and  would,  of  course,  be 
enslaved  again  on  their  return.  He  fancied  that  he  ought  to  inform 
the  men  of  the  fact,  but  then  he  was  stopped  by  the  reflection — 
who  was  to  provide  for  them  if  they  became  free  ?  and,  as  he  said 
with  a  sigh,  "while  I  was  thinking,  the  vessel  sailed."  So,  I  recol- 
lect, on  the  old  battle-field  of  Manassas,  in  which  I  strolled  in  com- 
pany with  Hawthorne,  meeting  a  batch  of  runaway  slaves — weary, 
footsore,  wretched,  and  helpless  beyond  conception  ;  we  gave  them 
food  and  wine,  some  small  sums  of  money,  and  got  them  a  lift  upon 
a  train  going  northward ;  but  not  long  afterward  Hawthorne  turned 
to  me  with  the  remark  :  "  I  am  not  sure  we  were  doing  right,  after 
all.  How  can  those  poor  beings  find  food  and  shelter  away  from 
home  ?  "  Thus  this  ingrained  and  inherent  doubt  incapacitated  him 
from  following  any  course  vigorously.  He  thought,  on  the  whole, 
that  Wendell  Phillips  and  Lloyd  Garrison  and  the  abolitionists  were 
in  the  right,  but  then  he  was  never  quite  certain  that  they  were  not 
in  the  wrong,  after  all ;  so  that  his  advocacy  of  their  cause  was  of  a 
very  uncertain  character.  He  saw  the  best,  to  alter  slightly  the 
famous  Horatian  line,  but  he  never  could  quite  make  up  his  mind 
whether  he  altogether  approved  of  its  wisdom,  and  therefore  fol- 
lowed it  but  falteringly. 

"  Better  to  bear  those  ills  we  have, 

Than  fly  to  others  that  we  know  not  of," 
23 


3S4  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 

expressed  the  philosophy  to  which  Hawthorne  was  thus  borne  im- 
perceptibly. Unjustly,  but  yet  not  unreasonably,  he  was  looked 
upon  as  a  pro-slavery  man,  and  suspected  of  Southern  sympathies. 
In  politics  he  was  always  halting  between  two  opinions  ;  or,  rather, 
holding  one  opinion,  he  could  never  summon  up  his  courage  to  ad- 
here to  it  and  it  only. 

The  truth  is,  that  his  own  times  and  their  people  and 
their  affairs  were  just  as  shadowy  to  him  as  those  of  any  of 
his  stories,  and  his  mind  held  the  same  curious,  half-wistful 
poise  among  all  the  conflicts  of  principle  and  passion  around 
him,  as  among  those  of  which  he  read  and  mused.  If  you 
ask  why  this  was  so — how  it  was  that  the  tragedy  of  an  old 
Italian  garden,  or  the  sin  of  a  lonely  Puritan  parish,  or  the 
crime  of  a  provincial  judge,  should  so  stimulate  his  imagina- 
tion with  romantic  appeals  and  harrowing  allegories,  while 
either  it  did  not  see  a  Carolina  slave-pen,  or  found  in  it  only 
a  tame  prosperity — you  must  take  your  answer  in  the  other 
question,  why  he  did  not  weave  into  any  of  his  stories  the 
black  and  bloody  thread  of  the  Inquisition.  His  genius 
obeyed  its  law.  When  he  wrote  like  a  disembodied  intelli- 
gence of  events  with  which  his  neighbors'  hearts  were  quiv- 
ering— when  the  same  half  smile  flutters  upon  his  lips  in  the 
essay  "About  War  Matters,"  sketched  as  it  were  upon  the 
battle-field,  as  in  that  upon  "  Fire-Worship, "  written  in  the 
rural  seclusion  of  the  mossy  Manse — ah,  me !  it  is  Dona- 
tello  in  his  tower  of  Monte  Beni,  contemplating  with  doubt- 
ful interest  the  field  upon  which  the  flower  of  men  are  dying 
for  an  idea.  Do  you  wonder,  as  you  see  him  and  hear  him, 
that  your  heart,  bewildered,  asks  and  asks  again,  "  Is  he  hu- 
man ?  Is  he  a  man  ?  " 

Now  that  Hawthorne  sleeps  by  the  tranquil  Concord, 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.  355 

upon  whose  shores  the  old  Manse  was  his  bridal  bower, 
those  who  knew  him  chiefly  there  revert  beyond  the  angry 
hour  to  those  peaceful  days.  How  dear  the  old  Manse  was 
to  him  he  has  himself  recorded ;  and  in  the  opening  of  the 
"  Tanglewood  Tales  "  he  pays  his  tribute  to  that  placid 
landscape,  which  will  always  be  recalled  with  pensive  ten- 
derness by  those  who,  like  him,  became  familiar  with  it  in 
happy  hours.  "To  me,"  he  writes,  " there  is  a  peculiar, 
quiet  charm  in  these  broad  meadows  and  gentle  eminences. 
They  are  better  than  mountains,  because  they  do  not  stamp 
and  stereotype  themselves  into  the  brain,  and  thus  grow 
wearisome  with  the  same  strong  impression  repeated  day 
after  day.  A  few  summer  weeks  among  mountains,  a  life- 
time among  green  meadows  and  placid  slopes,  with  outlines 
for  ever  new,  because  continually  fading  out  of  the  memory 
— such  would  be  my  sober  choice."  He  used  to  say,  in 
those  days — when,  as  he  was  fond  of  insisting,  he  was  the 
obscurest  author  in  the  world,  because,  although  he  had 
told  his  tales  twice,  nobody  cared  to  listen — that  he  never 
knew  exactly  how  he  contrived  to  live.  But  he  was  then 
married,  and  the  dullest  eye  could  not  fail  to  detect  the 
feminine  grace  and  taste  that  ordered  the  dwelling,  and 
perceive  the  tender  sagacity  that  made  all  things  possible. 

Such  was  his  simplicity  and  frugality  that,  when  he  was 
left  alone  for  a  little  time  in  his  new  Arcadia,  he  would  dis- 
miss "  the  help,"  and,  with  some  friend  of  other  days  who 
came  to  share  his  loneliness,  he  cooked  the  easy  meal  and 
washed  up  the  dishes.  No  picture  is  clearer  in  the  memory 
of  a  certain  writer  than  that  of  the  magician,  in  whose  pres- 
ence he  almost  lost  his  breath,  looking  at  him  over  a  dinner- 
plate  which  he  was  gravely  wiping  in  the  kitchen,  while  the 


356  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 

handy  friend,  who  had  been  a  Western  settler,  scoured  the 
kettle  at  the  door.  Blithedale,  where  their  acquaintance  had 
begun,  had  not  allowed  either  of  them  to  forget  how  to  help 
himself.  It  was  amusing  to  one  who  knew  this  native  inde- 
pendence of  Hawthorne,  to  hear,  some  years  afterward,  that 
he  wrote  the  "  campaign  "  "  Life  of  Franklin  Pierce  "  for  the 
sake  of  getting  an  office.  That  such  a  man  should  do  such 
a  work  was  possibly  incomprehensible,  to  those  who  did  not 
know  him,  upon  any  other  supposition,  until  the  fact  was 
known  that  Mr.  Pierce  was  an  old  and  constant  friend. 
Then  it  was  explained.  Hawthorne  asked  simply  how  he 
could  help  his  friend  ;  and  he  did  the  only  thing  he  could 
do  for  that  purpose.  But  although  he  passed  some  years  in 
public  office,  he  had  neither  taste  nor  talent  for  political  life. 
He  owed  his  offices  to  works  quite  other  than  political.  His 
first  and  second  appointments  were  virtually  made  by  his 
friend  Mr.  Bancroft,  and  the  third  by  his  friend  Mr.  Pierce. 
His  claims  were  perceptible  enough  to  friendship,  but  would 
hardly  have,  been  so  to  a  caucus. 

In  this  brief  essay  we  have  aimed  only  to  indicate  the 
general  character  of  the  genius  of  Hawthorne,  and  to  sug- 
gest a  key  to  his  peculiar  relation  to  his  time.  The  reader 
will  at  once  see  that  it  is  rather  the  man  than  the  author 
who  has  been  described ;  but  this  has  been  designedly  done, 
for  we  confess  a  personal  solicitude,  shared,  we  are  very 
sure,  by  many  friends  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  that  there 
shall  not  be  wanting  to  the  future  student  of  his  works  such 
light  as  acquaintance  with  the  man  may  throw  upon  them, 
as  well  as  some  picture  of  the  impression  his  personality 
made  upon  his  contemporaries. 

Strongly  formed,  of  dark,  poetic  gravity  of  aspect,  lighted 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.  357 

by  the  deep,  gleaming  eye  that  recoiled  with  girlish  coyness 
from  -contact  with  your  gaze ;  of  rare  courtesy  and  kindli- 
ness in  personal  intercourse,  yet  so  sensitive  that  his  look 
and  manner  can  be  suggested  by  the  word  glimmering ;  giv- 
ing you  a  sense  of  restrained  impatience  to  be  away;  mostly 
silent  in  society,  and  speaking  always  with  an  appearance  of 
effort,  but  with  a  lambent  light  of  delicate  humor  playing 
over  all  he  said  in  the  confidence  of  familiarity,  and  firm 
self-possession  under  all,  as  if  the  glimmering  manner  were 
only  the  tremulous  surface  of  the  sea — Hawthorne  was  per- 
sonally known  to  few,  and  intimately  to  very  few.  But  no 
one  knew  him  without  loving  him,  or  saw  him  without  re- 
membering him;  and  the  name  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne, 
which  when  it  was  first  written  was  supposed  to  be  ficti- 
tious, is  now  one  of  the  most  enduring  facts  of  English  lit- 
erature. 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 


No  American  writer  has  been  so  extensively  read  as 
James  Fenimore  Cooper.  His  novels  have  been  translated 
into  nearly  every  European  language.  Nay,  we  are  told — 
but  hardly  know  how  to  believe  it — that  they  may  be  had 
duly  rendered  into  Persian  at  the  bazaars  of  Ispahan.  We 
have  seen  some  of  them  well  thumbed  and  worn  at  a  little 
village  in  a  remote  mountainous  district  of  Sicily ;  and  in 
Naples  and  Milan  the  bookstalls  bear  witness  that  "  L'Ultimo 
dei  Mohecanni  "  is  still  a  popular  work.  In  England,  these 
American  novels  have  been  eagerly  read  and  transformed 
into  popular  dramas ;  while  cheap  and  often  stupidly  muti- 
lated editions  of  them  have  been  circulated  through  all  her 
colonies,  garrisons,  and  naval  stations,  from  New  Zealand 
to  Canada. 

Nor  is  this  widely-spread  popularity  undeserved.  Of 
all  American  writers  Cooper  is  the  most  original,  the  most 
thoroughly  national.  His  genius  drew  aliment  from  the  soil 
where  God  had  planted  it,  and  rose  to  a  vigorous  growth, 
rough  and  gnarled,  but  strong  as  a  mountain  cedar.  His 
volumes  are  a  faithful  mirror  of  that  rude  transatlantic 

*  The  Works  of  James  Fenimore  Cooper.     Author's  revised  edition. 
New  York  :  G.  P.  Putnam.     1851.     I2mo. 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.  359 

nature  which  to  European  eyes  appears  so  strange  and 
new.  The  sea  and  the  forest  have  been  the  scenes  of  his 
countrymen's  most  conspicuous  achievements ;  and  it  is  on 
the  sea  and  in  the  forest  that  Cooper  is  most  thoroughly  at 
home.  Their  spirit  inspired  him,  their  images  were  graven 
on  his  heart;  and  the  men  whom  their  embrace  has  nur- 
tured, the  sailor,  the  hunter,  the  pioneer,  move  and  act  upon 
his  pages  with  all  the  truth  and  energy  of  real  life. . 

There  is  one  great  writer  with  whom  Cooper  has  been 
often  compared,  and  the  comparison  is  not  void  of  justice  ; 
for  though,  on  the  whole,  far  inferior,  there  are  certain  high 
points  of  literary  excellence  in  regard  to  which  he  may  con- 
test the  palm  with  Sir  Walter  Scott.  It  is  true  that  he  has 
no  claim  to  share  the  humor  and  pathos,  the  fine  perception 
of  beauty  and  delicacy  in  character,  which  add  such  charms 
to  the  romances  of  Scott.  Nor  can  he  boast  that  compass 
and  variety  ot  power  which  could  deal  alike  with  forms  of 
humanity  so  diverse ;  which  could  portray  with  equal  mas- 
tery the  Templar  Bois  Guilbert,  and  the  Jewess  Rebecca ; 
the  manly  heart  of  Henry  Morton,  and  the  gentle  heroism 
of  Jeanie  Deans.  But  notwithstanding  this  unquestioned 
inferiority  on  the  part  of  Cooper,  there  were  marked  affinities 
between  him  and  his  great  contemporary.  Both  were  prac- 
tical men,  able  and  willing  to  grapple  with  the  hard  realities 
of  life.  Either  might  have  learned  with  ease  to  lead  a  regi- 
ment, or  command  a  line-of-battle  ship.  Their  conceptions 
of  character  were  no  mere  abstract  ideas,  or  unsubstantial 
images,  but  solid  embodiments  in  living  flesh  and  blood. 
Bulwer  and  Hawthorne — the  conjunction  may  excite  a  smile 
— are  writers  of  a  different  stamp.  Their  conceptions  are 
often  exhibited  with  consummate  skill,  and,  in  one  of  these 


360  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

examples  at  least,  with  admirable  truthfulness;  but  they 
never  cheat  us  into  a  belief  in  their  reality.  We  may  mar- 
vel at  the  skill  of  the-  artist,  but  we  are  prone  to  regard  his 
creations  rather  as  figments  of  art  than  as  reproductions  of 
nature — as  a  series  of  vivified  and  animate  pictures,  rather 
than  as  breathing  men  and  women.  With  Scott  and  with 
Cooper  it  is  far  otherwise.  Dominie  Sampson  and  the  anti- 
quary are  as  distinct  and  familiar  to  our  minds  as  some 
eccentric  acquaintance  of  our  childhood.  If  we  met  Long 
Tom  Coffin  on  the  wharf  at  New  Bedford,  we  should  wonder 
where  we  had  before  seen  that  familiar  face  and  figure. 
The  tall,  gaunt  form  of  Leatherstocking,  the  weather-beaten 
face,  the  bony  hand,  the  cap  of  fox-skin,  and  the  old  hunt- 
ing-frock, polished  with  long  service,  seem  so  palpable  and 
real,  that  in  some  moods  of  mind  one  may  easily  confound 
them  with  the  memories  of  his  own  experiences.  Others 
have  been  gifted  to  conceive  the  elements  of  far  loftier  char- 
acter, and  even  to  combine  these  in  a  manner  equally  truth- 
ful ;  but  few  have  rivaled  Cooper  in  the  power  of  breathing 
into  his  creations  the  breath  of  life,  and  turning  the  phan- 
toms of  his  brain  into  seeming  realities.  It  is  to  this,  in  no 
small  measure,  that  he  owes  his  widely  spread  popularity. 
His  most  successful  portraitures  are  drawn,  it  is  true,  from 
humble  walks  and  rude  associations ;  yet  they  are  instinct 
with  life,  and  stamped  with  the  impress  of  a  masculine  and 
original  genius. 

The  descriptions  of  external  nature  with  which  Cooper's 
works  abound  bear  a  certain  analogy  to  his  portraitures  of 
character.  There  is  no  glow  upon  his  pictures,  no  warm 
and  varied  coloring,  no  studied  contrast  of  light  and  shade. 
Their  virtue  consists  in  their  fidelity,  in  the  strength  with 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.  361 

which  they  impress  themselves  upon  the  mind,  and  the 
strange  tenacity  with  which  they  cling  to  the  memory.  For 
our  own  part,  it  was  many  years  since  we  had  turned  the 
pages  of  Cooper,  but  still  we  were  haunted  by  the  images 
which  his  spell  had  evoked  —  the  dark  gleaming  of  hill- 
embosomed  lakes,  the  tracery  of  forest  boughs  against  the 
red  evening  sky,  and  the  raven  flapping  his  black  wings 
above  the  carnage-field  near  the  Horicon.  These  descrip- 
tions have  often,  it  must  be  confessed,  the  grave  fault  of 
being  overloaded  with  detail ;  but  they  are  utterly  mistaken 
who  affirm,  as  some  have  done,  that  they  are  but  a  catalogue 
of  commonplaces — mountains  and  woods,  rivers  and  tor- 
rents, thrown  together  as  a  matter  of  course.  A  genuine 
love  of  nature  inspired  the  artist's  pen ;  and  they  who  can 
not  feel  the  efficacy  of  its  strong  picturing  have  neither  heart 
nor  mind  for  the  grandeur  of  the  outer  world. 

Before  proceeding,  however,  we  must  observe  that,  in 
speaking  of  Cooper's  writings,  we  have  reference  only  to 
those  happier  offsprings  of  his  genius  which  form  the  basis  of 
his  reputation  ;  for,  of  that  numerous  progeny  which  have  of 
late  years  swarmed  from  his  pen,  we  have  never  read  one, 
and  therefore,  notwithstanding  the  ancient  usage  of  review- 
ers, do  rot  think  ourselves  entitled  to  comment  upon  them. 

The  style  of  Cooper  is,  as  style  must  always  be,  in  no 
small  measure  the  exponent  of  the  author's  mind.  It  is  not 
elastic  or  varied,  and  is  certainly  far  from  elegant.  Its  best 
characteristics  are  a  manly  directness,  and  a  freedom  from 
those  prettinesses,  studied  turns  of  expression,  and  petty 
tricks  of  rhetoric,  which  are  the  pride  of  less  masculine 
writers.  Cooper  is  no  favorite  with  dilettanti  critics.  In 
truth,  such  criticism  does  not  suit  his  case.  He  should  be 


362  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

measured  on  deeper  principles,  not  by  his  manner,  but  by 
his  pith  and  substance.  A  rough  diamond — and  he  is  one 
of  the  roughest — is  worth  more  than  a  jewel  of  paste,  though 
its  facets  may  not  shine  so  clearly. 

And  yet,  try  Cooper  by  what  test  we  may,  we  shall  dis- 
cover in  him  grave  defects.  The  field  of  his  success  is,  after 
all,  a  narrow  one  ;  and  even  in  his  best  works  he  often  over- 
steps its  limits.  His  attempts  at  sentiment  are  notoriously 
unsuccessful.  Above  all,  when  he  aspires  to  portray  a  hero- 
ine, no  words  can  express  the  remarkable  character  of  the 
product.  With  simple  country  girls  he  succeeds  somewhat 
better ;  but,  when  he  essays  a  higher  flight,  his  failure  is  ca- 
lamitous. The  most  rabid  asserter  of  the  rights  of  woman 
is  scarcely  more  ignorant  of  woman's  true  power  and  dig- 
nity. This  is  the  more  singular,  as  his  novels  are  very  far 
from  being  void  of  feeling.  They  seldom,  however — and 
who  can  wonder  at  it  ? — find  much  favor  with  women,  who 
for  the  most  part  can  see  little  in  them  but  ghastly  stories 
of  shipwrecks,  ambuscades,  and  bush-fights,  mingled  with 
prolix  descriptions  and  stupid  dialogues.  Their  most  appre- 
ciating readers  may  perhaps  be  found,  not  among  persons 
of  sedentary  and  studious  habits,  but  among  those  of  a  more 
active  turn,  military  officers  and  the  like,  whose  tastes  have 
not  been  trained  into  fastidiousness,  and  who  are  often  bet- 
ter qualified  than  literary  men  to  feel  the  freshness  and  truth 
of  the  author's  descriptions. 

The  merit  of  a  novelist  is  usually  measured  less  by  his 
mere  power  of  description  than  by  his  skill  in  delineating 
character.  The  permanency  of  Cooper's  reputation  must, 
as  it  seems  to  us,  rest  upon  three  or  four  finely  conceived 
and  admirably  executed  portraits.  We  do  not  allude  to  his 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.  363 

Indian  characters,  which,  it  must  be  granted,  are  for  the 
most  part  either  superficially  or  falsely  drawn ;  while  the 
long  conversations  which  he  puts  into  their  mouths  are  as 
truthless  as  they  are  tiresome.  Such  as  they  are,  however, 
they  have  been  eagerly  copied  by  a  legion  of  the  smaller 
poets  and  novel  writers ;  so  that,  jointly  with  Thomas  Camp- 
bell, Cooper  is  responsible  for  the  fathering  of  those  aborigi- 
nal heroes,  lovers,  and  sages,  who  have  long  formed  a  petty 
nuisance  in  our  literature.  The  portraits  of  which  we  have 
spoken  are  all  those  of  white  men,  from  humble  ranks  of 
society,  yet  not  of  a  mean  or  vulgar  stamp.  Conspicuous 
before  them  all  stands  the  well-known  figure  of  Leather- 
stocking.  The  life  and  character  of  this  personage  are  con- 
tained in  a  series  of  five  independent  novels,  entitled,  in 
honor  of  him,  the  "  Leatherstocking  Tales."  Cooper  has 
been  censured,  and  even  ridiculed,  for  this  frequent  re- 
production of  his  favorite  hero,  which,  it  is  affirmed,  ar- 
gues poverty  of  invention  ;  and  yet  there  is  not  one  of  the 
tales  in  question  with  which  we  would  willingly  part.  To 
have  drawn  such  a  character  is  in  itself  sufficient  honor ; 
and,  had  Cooper  achieved  nothing  else,  this  alone  must  have 
insured  him  a  wide  and  merited  renown.  There  is  some- 
thing admirably  felicitous  in  the  conception  of  this  hybrid 
offspring  of  civilization  and  barbarism,  in  whom  uprightness, 
kindliness,  innate  philosophy,  and  the  truest  moral  percep- 
tions are  joined  with  the  wandering  instincts  and  the  hatred 
of  restraints  which  stamp  the  Indian  or  the  Bedouin.  Nor  is 
the  character  in  the  least  unnatural.  The  white  denizens 
of  the  forest  and  the  prairie  are  often  among  the  worst 
though  never  among  the  meanest  of  mankind  ;  but  it  is 
equally  true  that  where  the  moral  instincts  are  originally 


364  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

strong,  they  may  find  nutriment  and  growth  among  the  rude 
scenes  and  grand  associations  of  the  wilderness.  Men  as 
true,  generous,  and  kindly  as  Leatherstocking  may  still  be 
found  among  the  perilous  solitudes  of  the  West.  The  quiet, 
unostentatious  courage  of  Cooper's  hero  had  its  counterpart 
in  the  character  of  Daniel  Boone  ;  and  the  latter  had  the 
same  unaffected  love  of  nature  which  forms  so  pleasing  a 
feature  in  the  mind  of  Leatherstocking. 

Civilization  has  a  destroying  as  well  as  a  creating  power. 
It  is  exterminating  the  buffalo  and  the  Indian,  over  whose 
fate  too  many  lamentations,  real  or  affected,  have  been 
sounded  for  us  to  renew  them  here.  It  must,  moreover, 
sweep  from  before  it  a  class  of  men,  its  own  precursors  and 
pioneers,  so  remarkable  both  in  their  virtues  and  their  faults, 
that  few  will  see  their  extinction  without  regret.  Of  these 
men  Leatherstocking  is  the  representative ;  and  though  in 
him  the  traits  of  the  individual  are  quite  as  prominent  as 
those  of  the  class,  yet  his  character  is  not  on  this  account 
less  interesting,  or  less  worthy  of  permanent  remembrance. 
His  life  conveys  in  some  sort  an  epitome  of  American  his- 
tory, during  one  of  its  most  busy  and  decisive  periods.  At 
first  we  find  him  a  lonely  young  hunter  in  what  was  then  the 
wilderness  of  New  York.  Ten  or  twelve  years  later  he  is 
playing  his  part  manfully  in  the  old  French  war.  After  the 
close  of  the  Revolution,  we  meet  him  again  on  the  same  spot 
where  he  was  first  introduced  to  us ;  but  now  everything  is 
changed.  The  solitary  margin  of  the  Otsego  Lake  is  trans- 
formed into  the  seat  of  a  growing  settlement,  and  the  hunter, 
oppressed  by  the  restraints  of  society,  turns  his  aged  foot- 
steps westward  in  search  of  his  congenial  solitude.  At 
length  we  discover  him,  for  the  last  time,  an  octogenarian 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.  365 

trapper,  far  out  on  the  prairies  of  the  West.  It  is  clear  that 
the  successive  stages  of  his  retreat  from  society  could  not 
weir  be  presented  in  a  single  story,  and  that  the  repetition 
which  has  been  charged  against  Cooper  as  a  fault  was  in- 
dispensable to  the  development  of  his  design. 

"  The  Deerslayer,"  the  first  novel  in  the  series  of  Leath- 
erstocking  Tales,  seems  to  us  one  of  the  most  interesting  of 
Cooper's  productions.  He  has  chosen  for  the  scene  of  his 
story  the  Otsego  Lake,  on  whose  banks  he  lived  and  died, 
and  whose  scenery  he  has  introduced  into  three,  if  not 
more,  of  his  novels.  The  Deerslayer,  or  Leatherstocking, 
here  makes  his  first  appearance  as  a  young  man,  in  fact 
scarcely  emerged  from  boyhood,  yet  with  all  the  simplicity, 
candor,  feeling,  and  penetration  which  mark  his  riper  years. 
The  old  buccaneer  in  his  aquatic  habitation,  and  the  con- 
trasted characters  of  his  two  daughters,  add  a  human  inter- 
est to  the  scene,  for  the  want  of  which  the  highest  skill  in 
mere  landscape  painting  can  not  compensate.  The  charac- 
ter of  Judith  seems  to  us  the  best  drawn,  and  by  far  the 
most  interesting,  female  portrait  in  any  of  Cooper's  novels 
with  which  we  are  acquainted.  The  story,  however,  is  not 
free  from  the  characteristic  faults  of  its  author.  Above  all, 
it  contains,  in  one  instance  at  least,  a  glaring  exhibition  of 
his  aptitude  for  describing  horrors.  When  he  compels  his 
marvelously  graphic  pen  to  depict  scenes  which  would  dis- 
grace the  shambles  or  the  dissecting-table,  none  can  wonder 
that  ladies  and  young  clergymen  regard  his  pages  with  ab- 
horrence. These,  however,  are  but  casual  defects  in  a  work 
which  bears  the  unmistakable  impress  of  genius. 

"  The  Pathfinder "  forms  the  second  volume  of  the 
series,  and  is  remarkable,  even  among  its  companions,  for 


366  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

the  force  and  distinctness  of  its  pictures.  For  ourselves — 
though  we  diligently  perused  the  dispatches — the  battle  of 
Palo  Alto  and  the  storming  of  Monterey  are  not  more  real 
and  present  to  our  mind  than  some  of  the  scenes  and  char- 
acters of  "  The  Pathfinder,"  though  we  have  not  read  it  for 
nine  years — the  little  fort  on  the  margin  of  Lake  Ontario, 
the  surrounding  woods  and  waters,  the  veteran  major  in 
command,  the  treacherous  Scotchman,  the  dogmatic  old 
sailor,  and  the  Pathfinder  himself.  Several  of  these  scenes 
are  borrowed  in  part  from  Mrs.  Grant's  "Memoirs  of  an 
American  Lady " ;  but,  in  borrowing,  Cooper  has  trans- 
muted shadows  into  substance.  Mrs.  Grant's  facts — for  as 
such  we  are  to  take  them — have  an  air  of  fiction ;  while 
Cooper's  fiction  wears  the  aspect  of  solid  fact.  His  peculiar 
powers  could  not  be  better  illustrated  than  by  a  comparison 
of  the  passages  alluded  to  in  the  two  books. 

One  of  the  most  widely  known  of  Cooper's  novels  is 
"  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  which  forms  the  third  volume 
of  the  series,  and  which,  with  all  the  elements  of  a  vulgar 
popularity,  combines  excellences  of  a  far  higher  order.  It 
has,  nevertheless,  its  great  and  obtrusive  faults.  It  takes 
needless  liberties  with  history ;  and,  though  it  would  be 
folly  to  demand  that  an  historical  novelist  should  always 
conform  to  received  authorities,  yet  it  is  certainly  desirable 
that  he  should  not  unnecessarily  set  them  at  defiance ;  since 
the  incidents  of  the  novel  are  apt  to  remain  longer  in  the 
memory  than  those  of  the  less  palatable  history.  But  what- 
ever may  be  the  extent  of  the  novelist's  license,  it  is  at  all 
events  essential  that  his  story  should  have  some  semblance 
of  probability,  and  not  run  counter  to  nature  and  common 
sense.  In  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans  "  the  machinery  of 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.  367 

the  plot  falls  little  short  of  absurdity.  Why  a  veteran  offi- 
cer, pent  up  in  a  little  fort,  and  hourly  expecting  to  be  be- 
leaguered by  a  vastly  superior  force,  consisting  in  great  part 
of  bloodthirsty  savages,  should  at  that  particular  time  desire 
or  permit  a  visit  from  his  two  daughters,  is  a  question  not 
easy  to  answer.  Nor  is  the  difficulty  lessened  when  it  is 
remembered  that  the  young  ladies  are  to  make  the  journey 
through  a  wilderness  full  of  Indian  scalping-parties.  It  is 
equally  difficult  to  see  why  the  lover  of  Alice  should  choose, 
merely  for  the  sake  of  a  romantic  ride,  to  conduct  her  and 
her  sister  by  a  circuitous  and  most  perilous  by-path  through 
the  forests,  when  they  might  more  easily  have  gone  by  a 
good  road  under  the  safe  escort  of  a  column  of  troops  who 
marched  for  the  fort  that  very  morning.  The  story  founded 
on  these  gross  inventions  is  sustained  by  various  minor  im- 
probabilities, which  can  not  escape  the  reader  unless  his 
attention  is  absorbed  by  the  powerful  interest  of  the  nar- 
rative. 

It  seems  to  us  a  defect  in  a  novel  or  a  poem  when  the 
heroine  is  compelled  to  undergo  bodily  hardship,  to  sleep 
out  at  night  in  the  woods,  drenched  by  rain,  stung  by  mos- 
quitoes, and  scratched  by  briers — to  forego  all  appliances  of 
the  toilet,  and  above  all,  to  lodge  in  an  Indian  wigwam. 
Women  have  sometimes  endured  such  privation,  and  en- 
dured it  with  fortitude ;  but  it  may  be  safely  affirmed  that, 
for  the  time,  all  grace  and  romance  were  banished  from  their 
presence.  We  read  Longfellow's  "  Evangeline  "  with  much 
sympathy  in  the  fortunes  of  the  errant  heroine,  until,  as  we 
approached  the  end  of  the  poem,  every  other  sentiment  was 
lost  in  admiration  of  the  unparalleled  extent  of  her  wander- 
ings, at  the  dexterity  with  which  she  contrived  to  elude  at 


368  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

least  a  dozen  tribes  of  savages  at  that  time  in  a  state  of  war, 
at  the  strength  of  her  constitution,  and  at  her  marvelous 
proficiency  in  woodcraft.  When,  however,  we  had  followed 
her  for  about  two  thousand  miles  on  her  forest  pilgrimage, 
and  reflected  on  the  figure  she  must  have  made,  so  tattered 
and  bepatched,  bedrenched  and  bedraggled,  we  could  not 
but  esteem  it  a  happy  circumstance  that  she  failed,  as  she 
did,  to  meet  her  lover ;  since,  had  he  seen  her  in  such 
plight,  every  spark  of  sentiment  must  have  vanished  from 
his  breast,  and  all  the  romance  of  the  poem  been  inglori- 
ously  extinguished.  With  Cooper's  heroines,  Cora  and  Alice, 
the  case  is  not  so  hard.  Yet,  as  it  does  not  appear  that,  on 
a  journey  of  several  weeks,  they  were  permitted  to  carry  so 
much  as  a  valise  or  a  carpet-bag,  and  as  we  are  expressly 
told  that,  on  several  occasions,  they  dropped  by  the  wayside 
their  gloves,  veils,  and  other  useful  articles  of  apparel,  it  is 
certain  that  at  the  journey's  end  they  must  have  presented 
an  appearance  more  calculated  to  call  forth  a  Christian  sym- 
pathy than  any  emotion  of  a  more  romantic  nature. 

In  respect  to  the  delineation  of  character,  "  The  Last  of 
the  Mohicans  "  is  surpassed  by  several  other  works  of  the 
author.  Its  distinguishing  merit  lies  in  its  descriptions  of 
scenery  and  action.  Of  the  personages  who  figure  in  it,  one 
of  the  most  interesting  is  the  young  Mohican,  Uncas,  who, 
however,  does  not  at  all  resemble  a  genuine  Indian.  Magua, 
the  villain  of  the  story,  is  a  less  untruthful  portrait.  Cooper 
has  been  criticised  for  representing  him  as  falling  in  love 
with  Cora ;  and  the  criticism  is  based  on  the  alleged  ground 
that  passions  of  this  kind  are  not  characteristic  of  the  In- 
dian. This  may,  in  some  qualified  sense,  be  true ;  but  it  is 
well  known  that  Indians,  in  real  life  as  well  as  in  novels, 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.  369 

display  a  peculiar  partiality  for  white  women,  on  the  same 
principle  by  which  Italians  are  prone  to  admire  a  light  com- 
plexion, while  the  Swedes  regard  a  brunette  with  highest  es- 
teem. Cora  was  the  very  person  to  fascinate  an  Indian. 
The  coldest  warrior  would  gladly  have  received  her  into  his 
lodge,  and  promoted  her  to  be  his  favorite  wife,  wholly  dis- 
pensing, in  honor  of  her  charms,  with  flagellation  or  any  of 
the  severer  marks  of  conjugal  displeasure. 

The  character  of  Hawkeye  or  Leatherstocking  is,  in 
"  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans  "  as  elsewhere,  clearly  and  ad- 
mirably drawn.  He  often  displays,  however,  a  weakness 
which  excites  the  impatience  of  the  reader — an  excessive 
and  ill-timed  loquacity.  When,  for  example,  in  the  fight  at 
Glenn's  Falls,  he  and  Major  Heywood  are  crouching  in  the 
thicket,  watching  the  motions  of  four  Indians,  whose  heads 
are  visible  above  a  log  at  a  little  distance,  and  who,  in  the 
expression  of  Hawkeye  himself,  are  gathering  for  a  rush,  the 
scout  employs  the  time  in  dilating  upon  the  properties  of 
the  "long-barreled,  soft-metaled  rifle."  The  design  is,  no 
doubt,  to  convey  an  impression  of  his  coolness  in  moments 
of  extreme  danger ;  but,  under  such  circumstances,  the 
bravest  man  would  judge  it  the  part  of  good  sense  to  use 
his  eyes  rather  than  his  tongue.  Men  of  Hawkeye's  class, 
however  talkative  they  may  be  at  the  camp-fire,  are  remark- 
able for  preserving  a  close  silence  while  engaged  in  the 
active  labors  of  their  calling. 

It  is  easy  to  find  fault  with  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans," 
but  it  is  far  from  easy  to  rival  or  even  approach  its  excel- 
lences. The  book  has  the  genuine  game  flavor ;  it  exhales 
the  odors  of  the  pine-woods  and  the  freshness  of  the  moun- 
tain wind.  Its  dark  and  rugged  scenery  rises  as  distinctly 
24 


37o  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

on  the  eye  as  the  images  of  the  painter's  canvas,  or  rather 
as  the  reflection  of  Nature  herself.  But  it  is  not  as  the  mere 
rendering  of  material  forms  that  these  wood-paintings  are 
most  highly  to  be  esteemed  ;  they  breathe  the  somber  poetry 
of  solitude  and  danger.  In  these  achievements  of  his  art, 
Cooper,  we  think,  has  no  equal,  unless  it  may  be  the  author 
of  that  striking  romance,  "Wacousta;  or,  The  Prophecy," 
whose  fine  powers  of  imagination  are,  however,  even  less 
under  the  guidance  of  a  just  taste  than  those  of  the  Ameri- 
can novelist. 

The  most  obvious  merit  of  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans  " 
consists  in  its  descriptions  of  action,  in  the  power  with  which 
the  author  absorbs  the  reader's  sympathies,  and  leads  him, 
as  it  were,  to  play  a  part  in  the  scene.  One  reads  the  ac- 
counts of  a  great  battle — aside  from  any  cause  or  principle 
at  issue — with  the  same  kind  of  interest  with  which  he  be- 
holds the  grand  destructive  phenomena  of  nature,  a  tempest 
at  sea,  or  a  tornado  in  the  tropics ;  yet  with  a  feeling  far 
more  intense,  since  the  conflict  is  not  a  mere  striving  of  in- 
sensate elements,  but  of  living  tides  of  human  wrath  and 
valor.  With  descriptions  of  petty  skirmishes  or  single  com- 
bats the  feeling  is  of  a  different  kind.  The  reader  is  enlisted 
in  the  fray — a  partaker,  as  it  were,  in  every  thought  and 
movement  of  the  combatants,  in  the  alternations  of  fear  and 
triumph,  the  prompt  expedient,  the  desperate  resort,  the  pal- 
pitations of  human  weakness,  or  the  courage  that  faces 
death.  Of  this  species  of  description,  the  scene  of  the  con- 
flict at  Glenn's  Falls  is  an  admirable  example,  unsurpassed, 
we  think,  even  by  the  combat  of  Balfour  and  Bothwell,  or 
by  any  other  passage  of  the  kind  in  the  novels  of  Scott. 
The  scenery  of  the  fight,  the  foaming  cataract,  the  little  islet 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.  37 1 

with  its  stout-hearted  defenders,  the  precipices  and  the  dark 
pine-woods,  add  greatly  to  the  effect.  The  scene  is  conjured 
before  the  reader's  eye,  not  as  a  vision  or  a  picture,  but  like 
the  tangible  presence  of  rock,  river,  and  forest.  His  very 
senses  seem  conspiring  to  deceive  him.  He  seems  to  feel 
against  his  cheek  the  wind  and  spray  of  the  cataract,  and 
hear  its  sullen  roar,  amid  the  yells  of  the  assailants  and  the 
sharp  crack  of  the  answering  rifle.  The  scene  of  the  strife 
is  pointed  out  to  travelers  as  if  this  fictitious  combat  were  a 
real  event  of  history.  Mills,  factories,  and  bridges  have 
marred  the  native  wildness  of  the  spot,  and  a  village  has 
usurped  the  domain  of  the  forest ;  yet  still  those  foaming 
waters  and  black  sheets  of  limestone  rock  are  clothed  with 
all  the  interest  of  an  historic  memory ;  and  the  cicerone  of 
the  place  can  show  the  caves  where  the  affrighted  sisters 
took  refuge,  the  point  where  the  Indians  landed,  and  the 
rock  whence  the  despairing  Huron  was  flung  into  the  abyss. 
Nay,  if  the  lapse  of  a  few  years  has  not  enlightened  his  un- 
derstanding, the  guide  would  as  soon  doubt  the  reality  of 
the  battle  of  Saratoga  as  that  of  Hawkeye's  fight  with  the 
Mingoes. 

"  The  Pioneers,"  the  fourth  volume  of  the  series,  is,  in 
several  respects,  the  best  of  Cooper's  works.  Unlike  some 
of  its  companions,  it  bears  every  mark  of  having  been  writ- 
ten from  the  results  of  personal  experience ;  and,  indeed, 
Cooper  is  well  known  to  have  drawn  largely  on  the  recollec- 
tions of  his  earlier  years  in  the  composition  of  this  novel. 
The  characters  are  full  of  vitality  and  truth,  though,  in  one 
or  two  instances,  the  excellence  of  the  delineation  is  im- 
paired by  a  certain  taint  of  vulgarity.  Leatherstocking,  as 
he  appears  in  "  The  Pioneers,"  must  certainly  have  had  his 


372  JAMES  FEN  I  MO  RE  COOPER. 

living  original  in  some  gaunt,  gray-haired  old  woodsman,  to 
whose  stories  of  hunts  and  Indian  fights  the  author  may 
perhaps  have  listened  in  his  boyhood  with  rapt  ears,  uncon- 
sciously garnering  up  in  memory  the  germs  which  time  was 
to  develop  into  a  rich  harvest.  The  scenes  of  the  Christmas 
turkey-shooting,  the  fish-spearing  by  firelight  on  Otsego 
Lake,  the  rescue  from  the  panther,  and  the  burning  of  the 
woods,  are  all  inimitable  in  their  way.  Of  all  Cooper's 
works,  "  The  Pioneers  "  seems  to  us  most  likely  to  hold  a 
permanent  place  in  literature,  for  it  preserves  a  vivid  reflec- 
tion of  scenes  and  characters  which  will  soon  have  passed 
away. 

"The  Prairie,"  the  last  of  the  "  Leatherstocking  Tales," 
is  a  novel  of  far  inferior  merit.  The  story  is  very  improb- 
able, and  not  very  interesting.  The  pictures  of  scenery  are 
less  true  to  nature  than  in  the  previous  volumes,  and  seem  to 
indicate  that  Cooper  had  little  or  no  personal  acquaintance 
with  the  remoter  parts  of  the  West.  The  book,  however, 
has  several  passages  of  much  interest,  one  of  the  best  of 
which  is  the  scene  in  which  the  aged  trapper  discovers,  in 
the  person  of  a  young  officer,  the  grandson  of  Duncan  Hey- 
wood  and  Alice  Munro,  whom,  half  a  century  before,  he 
had  protected  in  such  imminent  jeopardy  on  the  rocks  of 
Glenn's  Falls  and  among  the  mountains  of  Lake  George. 
The  death  of  Abiram  White  is  very  striking,  though  remind- 
ing one  of  a  similar  scene  in  "The  Spy."  The  grand  de- 
formity in  the  story  is  the  wretched  attempt  at  humor  in  the 
person  of  Dr.  Obed  Battius.  David  Gamut,  in  "  The  Mo- 
hicans," is  bad  enough  ;  but  Battius  out-Herods  Herod,  and 
great  must  be  the  merit  of  the  book  which  one  such  incubus 
would  not  sink  beyond  redemption. 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.  373 

The  novel  which  first  brought  the  name  of  Cooper  into 
distinguished  notice  was  "  The  Spy  " ;  and  this  book,  which 
gave  him  his  earliest  reputation,  will  contribute  largely  to 
preserve  it.  The  story  is  full  of  interest,  and  the  character 
of  Harvey  Birch  is  drawn  with  singular  skill. 

"  The  Pilot  "  is  usually  considered  the  best  of  Cooper's 
sea-tales.  It  is  in  truth  a  masterpiece  of  his  genius ;  and 
although  the  reader  is  apt  to  pass  with  impatience  over  the 
long  conversations  among  the  ladies  at  Saint  Ruth's,  and 
between  Alice  Dunscombe  and  the  disguised  Paul  Jones, 
yet  he  is  amply  repaid  when  he  follows  the  author  to  his 
congenial  element.  The  description  of  the  wreck  of  the 
Ariel,  and  the  death  of  Long  Tom  Coffin,  can  scarcely  be 
spoken  of  in  terms  of  too  much  admiration.  Long  Tom  is 
to  Cooper's  sea-tales  what  Leatherstocking  is  to  the  novels 
of  the  forest — a  conception  so  original  and  forcible  that 
posterity  will  hardly  suffer  it  to  escape  from  remembrance. 
"  The  Red  Rover,"  "  The  Water-Witch,"  and  the  remainder 
of  the  sea-tales,  are  marked  with  the  same  excellences  and 
defects  with  the  novels  already  mentioned,  and  further  com- 
ments would  therefore  be  useless. 

The  recent  death  of  the  man  who  had  achieved  so  much 
in  the  cause  of  American  literature  has  called  forth,  as  it 
should  have  done,  a  general  expression  of  regret ;  and  the 
outcries,  not  unprovoked,  which  of  late  have  been  raised 
against  him,  are  drowned  in  the  voice  of  sorrow.  The  most 
marked  and  original  of  American  writers  has  passed  from 
among  us.  It  was  an  auspicious  moment  when  his  earlier 
works  first  saw  the  light ;  for  there  was  promise  in  their  rude 
vigor — a  good  hope  that  from  such  rough  beginnings  the 
country  might  develop  a  literary  progeny  which,  taking  les- 


374  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

sons  in  the  graces,  and  refining  with  the  lapse  of  years, 
might  one  day  do  honor  to  its  parentage ;  and  when  the 
chastened  genius  of  Bryant  arose  it  seemed  that  the  fulfill- 
ment of  such  a  hope  was  not  far  remote.  But  this  fair  prom- 
ise has  failed,  and  to  this  hour  the  purpose,  the  energy,  the 
passion  of  America  have  never  found  their  adequate  ex- 
pression on  the  printed  page.  The  number  of  good  writers 
truly  American,  by  which  we  mean  all  those  who  are  not 
imitators  of  foreign  modes,  might  be  counted  on  the  fingers 
of  the  two  hands  ;  nor  are  the  writers  of  this  small  class,  not 
excepting  even  Bryant  himself,  in  any  eminent  degree  the 
favorites  of  those  among  their  countrymen  who  make  pre- 
tensions to  taste  and  refinement.  As  in  life  and  manners 
the  American  people  seem  bent  on  aping  the  polished  luxury 
of  another  hemisphere,  so  likewise  they  reserve  their  enthu- 
siasm and  their  purses  for  the  honeyed  verse  and  sugared 
prose  of  an  emasculate  and  supposititious  literature. 

Some  French  writer — Chateaubriand,  we  believe — ob- 
serves that  the  only  portion  of  the  American  people  who 
exhibit  any  distinctive  national  character  are  the  backwoods- 
men of  the  West.  The  remark  is  not  strictly  true.  The 
whole  merchant  marine,  from  captains  to  cabin-boys,  the 
lumbermen  of  Maine,  the  farmers  of  New  England,  and 
indeed  all  the  laboring  population  of  the  country,  not  of 
foreign  origin,  are  marked  with  strong  and  peculiar  traits. 
But  when  we  ascend  into  the  educated  and  polished  classes 
these  peculiarities  are  smoothed  away,  until,  in  many  cases, 
they  are  invisible.  An  educated  Englishman  is  an  English- 
man still ;  an  educated  Frenchman  is  often  intensely  French; 
but  an  educated  American  is  apt  to  have  no  national  char- 
acter at  all.  The  condition  of  the  literature  of  the  country 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.  375 

is,  as  might  be  expected,  in  close  accordance  with  these  pe- 
culiarities of  its  society.  With  but  few  exceptions,  the  only 
books  which  reflect  the  national  mind  are  those  which  ema- 
nate from,  or  are  adapted  to,  the  unschooled  classes  of  the 
people  —  such,  for  example,  as  Dr.  Bird's  "Nick  of  the 
Woods,"  "  The  Life  of  David  Crockett,"  "  The  Big  Bear  of 
Arkansas,"  with  its  kindred  legends,  and,  we  may  add,  the 
earlier  novels  of  Cooper.  In  the  politer  walks  of  literature 
we  find  much  grace  of  style,  but  very  little  originality  of 
thought — productions  which  might  as  readily  be  taken  for 
the  work  of  an  Englishman  as  of  an  American. 

This  lack  of  originality  has  been  loudly  complained  of, 
but  it  seems  to  us  inevitable  under  the  circumstances.  The 
healthful  growth  of  the  intellect,  whether  national  or  indi- 
vidual, like  healthful  growth  of  every  other  kind,  must  pro- 
ceed from  the  action  of  internal  energies,  not  from  foreign 
aid.  Too  much  assistance,  too  many  stimulants,  weaken 
instead  of  increasing  it.  The  cravings  of  the  American 
mind,  eager  as  they  are,  are  amply  supplied  by  the  copious 
stream  of  English  current  literature.  Thousands,  nay,  mil- 
lions of  readers  and  writers  drink  from  this  bounteous 
source,  and  feed  on  this  foreign  aliment,  till  the  whole  com- 
plexion of  their  thoughts  is  tinged  with  it,  and  by  a  sort  of 
necessity  they  think  and  write  at  second  hand.  If  this  trans- 
atlantic supply  were  completely  cut  off,  and  the  nation  aban- 
doned to  its  own  resources,  it  would  eventually  promote,  in 
a  high  degree,  the  development  of  the  national  intellect. 
The  vitality  and  force,  which  are  abundantly  displayed  in 
every  department  of  active  life,  would  soon  find  their  way 
into  a  higher  channel,  to  meet  the  new  and  clamorous  ne- 
cessity for  mental  food ;  and,  in  the  space  of  a  generation, 


376  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

the  oft-repeated  demand  for  an  original  literature  would  be 
fully  satisfied. 

In  respect  to  every  department  of  active  life,  the  United 
States  are  fully  emancipated  from  their  ancient  colonial  sub- 
jection. They  can  plan,  invent,,  and  achieve  for  themselves, 
and  this,  too,  with  a  commanding  success.  But  in  all  the 
finer  functions  of  thought,  in  all  matters  of  literature  and 
taste,  we  are  essentially  provincial.  England  once  held  us 
in  a  state  of  political  dependency.  That  day  is  past;  but 
she  still  holds  us  in  an  intellectual  dependency  far  more 
complete.  Her  thoughts  become  our  thoughts,  by  a  process 
unconscious  but  inevitable.  She  caters  for  our  mind  and 
fancy  with  a  liberal  hand.  We  are  spared  the  labor  of  self- 
support  ;  but  by  the  universal  law,  applicable  to  nations  no 
less  than  to  individuals,  we  are  weakened  by  the  want  of 
independent  exercise.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  remark 
that  the  most  highly  educated  classes  among  us  are  far  from 
being  the  most  efficient  either  in  thought  or  action.  The 
vigorous  life  of  the  nation  springs  from  the  deep  rich  soil  at 
the  bottom  of  society.  Its  men  of  greatest  influence  are 
those  who  have  studied  men  before  they  studied  books,  and 
who,  by  hard  battling  with  the  world,  and  boldly  following 
out  the  bent  of  their  native  genius,  have  hewed  their  own 
way  to  wealth,  station,  or  knowledge  from  the  plowshare  or 
the  forecastle.  The  comparative  shortcomings  of  the  best 
educated  among  us  may  be  traced  to  several  causes ;  but, 
as  we  are  constrained  to  think,  they  are  mainly  owing  to 
the  fact  that  the  highest  civilization  of  America  is  commu- 
nicated from  without  instead  of  being  developed  from  within, 
and  is  therefore  nerveless  and  unproductive. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 


MANY  years  ago,  while  yet  Fancy  claimed  that  right  in 
me  which  Fact  has  since,  to  my  no  small  loss,  so  successfully 
disputed,  I  pleased  myself  with  imagining  the  play  of  "  Ham- 
let "  published  under  some  alias,  and  as  the  work  of  a  new 
candidate  in  literature.  Then  I  played,  as  the  children  say, 
that  it  came  in  regular  course  before  some  well-meaning 
doer  of  criticisms,  who  had  never  read  the  original  (no  very 
wild  assumption,  as  things  go),  and  endeavored  to  conceive 
the  kind  of  way  in  which  he  would  be  likely  to  take  it.  I 
put  myself  in  his  place,  and  tried  to  write  such  a  perfunctory 
notice  as  I  thought  would  be  likely,  in  filling  his  column,  to 
satisfy  his  conscience.  But  it  was  a  tour  de  force  quite  be- 
yond my  power  to  execute  without  grimace.  I  could  not 
arrive  at  that  artistic  absorption  in  my  own  conception 
which  would  enable  me  to  be  natural,  and  found  myself,  like 
a  bad  actor,  continually  betraying  my  self-consciousness  by 
my  very  endeavor  to  hide  it  under  caricature.  The  path 
of  nature  is  indeed  a  narrow  one,  and  it  is  only  the  immor- 
tals that  seek  it,  and,  when  they  find  it,  do  not  find  them- 
selves cramped  therein.  My  result  was  a  dead  failure — 
satire  instead  of  comedy.  I  could  not  shake  off  that  strange 


378  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

accumulation  which  we  call  self,  and  report  honestly  what  I 
saw  and  felt  even  to  myself,  much  less  to  others. 

Yet  I  have  often  thought  that,  unless  we  can  so  far  free 
ourselves  from  our  own  prepossessions  as  to  be  capable  of 
bringing  to  a  work  of  art  some  freshness  of  sensation,  and 
receiving  from  it  in  turn  some  new  surprise  of  sympathy  and 
admiration — some  shock  even,  it  may  be,  of  instinctive  dis- 
taste and  repulsion — though  we  may  praise  or  blame,  weigh- 
ing our  pros  and  cons  in  the  nicest  balances,  sealed  by  proper 
authority,  yet  we  shall  not  criticise  in  the  highest  sense. 
On  the  other  hand,  unless  we  admit  certain  principles  as 
fixed  beyond  question,  we  shall  be  able  to  render  no  ade- 
quate judgment,  but  only  to  record  our  impressions,  which 
may  be  valuable  or  not,  according  to  the  greater  or  less  duc- 
tility of  the  senses  on  which  they  are  made.  Charles  Lamb, 
for  example,  came  to  the  old  English  dramatists  with  the 
feeling  of  a  discoverer.  He  brought  with  him  an  alert  curi- 
osity, and  everything  was  delightful  simply  because  it  was 
strange.  Like  other  early  adventurers,  he  sometimes  mis- 
takes shining  sand  for  gold ;  but  he  had  the  great  advantage 
of  not  feeling  himself  responsible  for  the  manners  of  the 
inhabitants  he  found  there,  and  not  thinking  it  needful 
to  make  them  square  with  any  Westminster  Catechism  of 
aesthetics.  Best  of  all,  he  does  not  feel  compelled  to  com- 
pare them  with  the  Greeks,  about  whom  he  knew  little,  and 
cared  less.  He  takes  them  as  he  finds  them,  describes  them 
in  a  few  pregnant  sentences,  and  displays  his  specimens  of 
their  growth  and  manufacture.  When  he  arrives  at  the 
dramatists  of  the  Restoration,  so  far  from  being  shocked, 
he  is  charmed  with  their  pretty  and  unmoral  ways;  and 
what  he  says  of  them  reminds  us  of  blunt  Captain  Dampier, 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


379 


who,  in  his  account  of  the  island  of  Timor,  remarks  as  a 
matter  of  no  consequence  that  the  natives  "  take  as  many 
wives  as  they  can  maintain,  and  as  for  religion  they  have 
none." 

Lamb  had  the  great  advantage  of  seeing  the  elder  drama- 
tists as  they  were ;  it  did  not  lie  within  his  province  to 
point  out  what  they  were  not.  Himself  a  fragmentary 
writer,  he  had  more  sympathy  with  imagination  where  it 
gathers  into  the  intense  focus  of  passionate  phrase  than  with 
that  higher  form  of  it  where  it  is  the  faculty  that  shapes, 
gives  unity  of  design,  and  balanced  gravitation  of  parts. 
And  yet  it  is  only  this  higher  form  of  it  which  can  unim- 
peachably  assure  to  any  work  the  dignity  and  permanence 
of  a  classic ;  for  it  results  in  that  exquisite  something  called 
style,  which,  like  the  grace  of  perfect  breeding,  everywhere 
pervasive  and  nowhere  emphatic,  makes  itself  felt  by  the 
skill  with  which  it  effaces  itself,  and  masters  us  at  last  with 
a  sense  of  indefinable  completeness.  On  a  lower  plane  we 
may  detect  it  in  the  structure  of  a  sentence,  in  the  limpid 
expression  that  implies  sincerity  of  thought ;  but  it  is  only 
where  it  combines  and  organizes,  where  it  eludes  observation 
in  particulars  to  give  the  rarer  delight  of  perfection  as  a 
whole,  that  it  belongs  to  art.  Then  it  is  truly  ideal,  the 
forma  mentis  ceterna,  not  as  a  passive  mold  into  which  the 
thought  is  poured,  but  as  the  conceptive  energy  which  finds 
all  material  plastic  to  its  preconceived  design.  Mere  vivid- 
ness of  expression,  such  as  makes  quotable  passages,  comes 
of  the  complete  surrender  of  self  to  the  impression,  whether 
spiritual  or  sensual,  of  the  moment.  It  is  a  quality,  perhaps, 
in  which  the  young  poet  is  richer  than  the  mature,  his  very 
inexperience  making  him  more  venturesome  in  those  leaps 


38o  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

of  language  that  startle  us  with  their  rashness  only  to  be- 
witch us  the  more  with  the  happy  ease  of  their  accomplish- 
ment. For  this  there  are  no  existing  laws  of  rhetoric,  for  it 
is  from  such  felicities  that  the  rhetoricians  deduce  and  codify 
their  statutes.  It  is  something  which  can  not  be  improved 
upon  or  cultivated,  for  it  is  immediate  and  intuitive.  But 
this  power  of  expression  is  subsidiary,  and  goes  only  a  little 
way  toward  the  making  of  a  great  poet.  Imagination,  where 
it  is  truly  creative,  is  a  faculty,  and  not  a  quality ;  it  looks 
before  and  after,  it  gives  the  form  that  makes  all  the  parts 
work  together  harmoniously  toward  a  given  end,  its  seat  is 
in  the  higher  reason,  and  it  is  efficient  only  as  a  servant  of 
the  will.  Imagination,  as  it  is  too  often  misunderstood, 
is  mere  phantasy,  the  image-making  power,  common  to  all 
who  have  the  gift  of  dreams,  or  who  can  afford  to  buy  it  in 
a  vulgar  drug  as  De  Quincey  bought  it. 

The  true  poetic  imagination  is  of  one  quality,  whether 
it  be  ancient  or  modern,  and  equally  subject  to  those  laws 
of  grace,  of  proportion,  of  design,  in  whose  free  service,  and 
in  that  alone,'it  can  become  art.  Those  laws  are  something 
which  do  not 

" .  .  .  .  alter  when  they  alteration  find, 
And  bend  with  the  remover  to  remove." 

And  they  are  more  clearly  to  be  deduced  from  the  eminent 
examples  of  Greek  literature  than  from  any  other  source. 
It  is  the  advantage  of  this  select  company  of  ancients  that 
their  works  are  defecated  of  all  turbid  mixture  of  contem- 
poraneousness, and  have  become  to  us  pure  literature,  our 
judgment  and  enjoyment  of  which  can  not  be  vulgarized  by 
any  prejudices  of  time  or  place.  This  is  why  the  study  of 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  381 

them  is  fitly  called  a  liberal  education,  because  it  emanci- 
pates the  mind  from  every  narrow  provincialism  whether  of 
egoism  or  tradition,  and  is  the  apprenticeship  that  every 
one  must  serve  before  becoming  a  free  brother  of  the  guild 
which  passes  the  torch  of  life  from  age  to  age.  There 
would  be  no  dispute  about  the  advantages  of  that  Greek 
culture  which  Schiller  advocated  with  such  generous  elo- 
quence, if  the  great  authors  of  antiquity  had  not  been  de- 
graded from  teachers  of  thinking  to  drillers  in  grammar, 
and  made  the  ruthless  pedagogues  of  root  and  inflection, 
instead  of  companions  for  whose  society  the  mind  must  put 
on  her  highest  mood.  The  discouraged  youth  too  naturally 
transfers  the  epithet  of  dead  from  the  languages  to  the 
authors  that  wrote  in  them.  What  concern  have  we  with 
the  shades  of  dialect  in  Homer  or  Theocritus,  provided 
they  speak  the  spiritual  lingua  franca  that  abolishes  all 
alienage  of  race,  and  makes  whatever  shore  of  time  we  land 
on  hospitable  and  homelike  ?  There  is  much  that  is  decid- 
uous in  books,  but  all  that  gives  them  a  title  to  rank  as 
literature  in  the  highest  sense  is  perennial.  Their  vitality 
is  the  vitality  not  of  one  or  another  blood  or  tongue,  but  of 
human  nature ;  their  truth  is  not  topical  and  transitory,  but 
of  universal  acceptation;  and  thus  all  great  authors  seem 
the  coevals  not  only  of  each  other,  but  of  whoever  reads 
them,  growing  wiser  with  him  as  he  grows  wise,  and  unlock- 
ing to  him  one  secret  after  another  as  his  own  life  and 
experience  give  him  the  key,  but  on  no  other  condition. 
Their  meaning  is  absolute,  not  conditional ;  it  is  a  property 
of  theirs,  quite  irrespective  of  manners  or  creed ;  for  the 
highest  culture,  the  development  of  the  individual  by  obser- 
vation, reflection,  and  study,  leads  to  one  result,  whether  in 


382         .          SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

Athens  or  in  London.  The  more  we  know  of  ancient  litera- 
ture, the  more  we  are  struck  with  its  modernness,  just  as 
the  more  we  study  the  maturer  dramas  of  Shakespeare,  the 
more  we  feel  his  nearness  in  certain  primary  qualities  to 
the  antique  and  classical.  Yet  even  in  saying  this  I  tacitly 
make  the  admission  that  it  is  the  Greeks  who  must  furnish 
us  with  our  standard  of  comparison.  Their  stamp  is  upon 
all  the  allowed  measures  and  weights  of  aesthetic  criticism. 
Nor  does  a  consciousness  of  this,  nor  a  constant  reference 
to  it,  in  any  sense  reduce  us  to  the  mere  copying  of  a  by- 
gone excellence ;  for  it  is  the  test  of  excellence  in  any  de- 
partment of  art  that  it  can  never  be  bygone,  and  it  is  not 
mere  difference  from  antique  models,  but  the  way  in  which 
that  difference  is  shown,  the  direction  it  takes,  that  we  are 
to  consider  in  our  judgment  of  a  modern  work.  The  model 
is  not  there  to  be  copied  merely,  but  that  the  study  of  it 
may  lead  us  insensibly  to  the  same  processes  of  thought  by 
which  its  purity  of  outline  and  harmony  of  parts  were  at- 
tained, and  enable  us  to  feel  that  strength  is  consistent  with 
repose,  that  multiplicity  is  not  abundance,  that  grace  is  but 
a  more  refined  form  of  power,  and  that  a  thought  is  none 
the  less  profound  that  the  limpidity  of  its  expression  allows 
us  to  measure  it  at  a  glance.  To  be  possessed  with  this 
conviction  gives  us  at  least  a  determinate  point  of  view, 
and  enables  us  to  appeal  a  case  of  taste  to  a  court  of  final 
judicature,  whose  decisions  are  guided  by  immutable  prin- 
ciples. When  we  hear  of  certain  productions  that  they  are 
feeble  in  design,  but  masterly  in  parts,  that  they  are  inco- 
herent, to  be  sure,  but  have  great  merits  of  style,  we  know 
that  it  can  not  be  true;  for,  in  the  highest  examples  we 
have,  the  master  is  revealed  by  his  plan,  by  his  power  of 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  383 

making  all  accessories,  each  in  its  due  relation,  subordinate 
to  it,  and  that  to  limit  style  to  the  rounding  of  a  period  or 
a  distich  is  wholly  to  misapprehend  its  truest  and  highest 
function.  Donne  is  full  of  salient  verses  that  would  take 
the  rudest  March  winds  of  criticism  with  their  beauty,  of 
thoughts  that  first  tease  us  like  charades  and  then  delight 
us  with  the  felicity  of  their  solution ;  but  these  have  not 
saved  him.  He  is  exiled  to  the  limbo  of  the  formless  and 
the  fragmentary.  To  take  a  more  recent  instance  :  Words- 
worth had,  in  some  respects,  a  deeper  insight,  and  a  more 
adequate  utterance  of  it,  than  any  man  of  his  generation. 
But  it  was  a  piecemeal  insight  and  utterance ;  his  imagina- 
tion was  feminine,  not  masculine,  receptive,  and  not  crea- 
tive. His  longer  poems  are  Egyptian  sand-wastes,  with 
here  and  there  an  oasis  of  exquisite  scenery,  a  grand  image, 
Sphinx-like,  half  buried  in  drifting  commonplaces,  or  the 
solitary  Pompey's  Pillar  of  some  towering  thought.  But 
what  is  the  fate  of  a  poet  who  owns  the  quarry,  but  can  not 
build  the  poem  ?  Ere  the  century  is  out  he  will  be  nine 
parts  dead,  and  immortal  only  in  that  tenth  part  of  him 
which  is  included  in  a  thin  volume  of  "beauties."  Already 
Moxon  has  felt  the  need  of  extracting  this  essential  oil  of 
him;  and  his  memory  will  be  kept  alive,  if  at  all,  by  the 
precious  material  rather  than  the  workmanship  of  the  vase 
that  contains  his  heart.  And  what  shall  we  forebode  of  so 
many  modern  poems,  full  of  splendid  passages,  beginning 
everywhere  and  leading  nowhere,  reminding  us  of  nothing 
so  much  as  the  amateur  architect  who  planned  his  own 
house,  and  forgot  the  staircase  that  should  connect  one  floor 
with  another,  putting  it  as  an  afterthought  on  the  outside  ? 
Lichtenberg  says  somewhere  that  it  was  the  advantage 


384  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

of  the  ancients  to  write  before  the  great  art  of  writing  ill 
had  been  invented ;  and  Shakespeare  may  be  said  to  have 
had  the  good  luck  of  coming  after  Spenser  (to  whom  the 
debt  of  English  poetry  is  incalculable)  had  reinvented  the 
art  of  writing  well.  But  Shakespeare  arrived  at  a  mastery 
in  this  respect  which  sets  him  above  all  other  poets.  He  is 
not  only  superior  in  degree,  but  he  is  also  different  in  kind. 
In  that  less  purely  artistic  sphere  of  style  which  concerns 
the  matter  rather  than  the  form  his  charm  is  often  unspeak- 
able. How  perfect  his  style  is  may  be  judged  from  the  fact 
that  it  never  curdles  into  mannerism,  and  thus  absolutely 
eludes  imitation.  Though  here,  if  anywhere,  the  style  is 
the  man,  yet  it  is  noticeable  only,  like  the  images  of  Brutus, 
by  its  absence,  so  thoroughly  is  he  absorbed  in  his  work, 
while  he  fuses  thought  and  word  indissolubly  together,  till 
all  the  particles  cohere  by  the  best  virtue  of  each.  With 
perfect  truth  he  has  said  of  himself  that  he  writes 

" ....  all  one,  ever  the  same, 
Putting  invention  in  a  noted  weed, 
That  every  word  doth  almost  tell  his  name." 

And  yet  who  has  so  succeeded  in  imitating  him  as  to  remind 
us  of  him  by  even  so  much  as  the  gait  of  a  single  verse  ? 
Those  magnificent  crystallizations  of  feeling  and  phrase, 
basaltic  masses,  molten  and  interfused  by  the  primal  fires  of 
passion,  are  not  to  be  reproduced  by  the  slow  experiments 
of  the  laboratory  striving  to  parody  creation  with  artifice. 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  seems  to  think  that  Shakespeare  has 
damaged  English  poetry.  I  wish  he  had !  It  is  true  he 
lifted  Dryden  above  himself  in  "  All  for  Love  "  ;  but  it  was 
Dryden  who  said  of  him,  by  instinctive  conviction  rather 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  385 

than  judgment,  that  within  his  magic  circle  none  dare  tread 
but  he.  Is  he  to  blame  for  the  extravagances  of  modern 
diction,  which  are  but  the  reaction  of  the  brazen  age  against 
the  degeneracy  of  art  into  artifice,  that  has  characterized  the 
silver  period  in  every  literature  ?  The  quality  in  him  which 
makes  him  at  once  so  thoroughly  English  and  so  thoroughly 
cosmopolitan  is  that  aeration  of  the  understanding  by  the 
imagination  which  he  has  in  common  with  all  the  greater 
poets,  and  which  is  the  privilege  of  genius.  The  modern 
school,  which  mistakes  violence  for  intensity,  seems  to  catch 
its  breath  when  it  finds  itself  on  the  verge  of  natural  ex- 
pression, and  to  say  to  itself,  "  Good  Heavens !  I  had  almost 
forgotten  I  was  inspired !  "  But  of  Shakespeare  we  do  not 
even  suspect  that  he  ever  remembered  it.  He  does  not  al- 
ways speak  in  that  intense  way  that  flames  up  in  "  Lear  "  and 
"  Macbeth  "  through  the  rifts  of  a  soil  volcanic  with  passion. 
He  allows  us  here  and  there  the  repose  of  a  commonplace 
character,  the  consoling  distraction  of  a  humorous  one.  He 
knows  how  to  be  equable  and  grand  without  effort,  so  that 
we  forget  the  altitude  of  thought  to  which  he  has  led  us,  be- 
cause the  slowly  receding  slope  of  a  mountain  stretching 
downward  by  ample  gradations  gives  a  less  startling  impres- 
sion of  height  than  to  look  over  the  edge  of  a  ravine  that 
makes  but  a  wrinkle  in  its  flank. 

Shakespeare  has  been  sometimes  taxed  with  the  barbar- 
ism of  profuseness  and  exaggeration.  But  this  is  to  measure 
him  by  a  Sophoclean  scale.  The  simplicity  of  the  antique 
tragedy  is  by  no  means  that  of  expression,  but  is  of  form 
merely.  In  the  utterance  of  great  passions,  something  must 
be  indulged  to  the  extravagance  of  nature ;  the  subdued 
tones  to  which  pathos  and  sentiment  are  limited  can  not  ex- 
25 


386  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

press  a  tempest  of  the  soul.  The  range  between  the  piteous 
"no  more  but  so,"  in  which  Ophelia  compresses  the  heart- 
break whose  compression  was  to  make  her  mad,  and  that 
sublime  appeal  of  Lear  to  the  elements  of  nature,  only  to 
be  matched,  if  matched  at  all,  in  the  "Prometheus,"  is  a  wide 
one,  and  Shakespeare  is  as  truly  simple  in  the  one  as  in  the 
other.  The  simplicity  of  poetry  is  not  that  of  prose,  nor  its 
clearness  that  of  ready  apprehension  merely.  To  a  subtile 
sense,  a  sense  heightened  by  sympathy,  those  sudden  fervors 
of  phrase,  gone  ere  one  can  say  it  lightens,  that  show  us 
Macbeth  groping  among  the  perplexities  of  thought  in  his 
conscience-clouded  mind,  and  reveal  the  intricacy  rather 
than  enlighten  it,  while  they  leave  the  eye  darkened  to  the 
literal  meaning  of  the  words,  yet  make  their  logical  se- 
quence, the  grandeur  of  the  conception,  and  its  truth  to 
nature  clearer  than  sober  daylight  could.  There  is  an  ob- 
scurity of  mist  rising  from  the  uridrained  shallows  of  the 
mind,  and  there  is  the  darkness  of  thunder-cloud  gathering 
its  electric  masses  with  passionate  intensity  from  the  clear 
element  of  the  imagination,  not  at  random  or  willfully,  but 
by  the  natural  processes  of  the  creative  faculty,  to  brood 
those  flashes  of  expression  that  transcend  rhetoric,  and  are 
only  to  be  apprehended  by  the  poetic  instinct. 

In  that  secondary  office  of  imagination,  where  it  serves 
the  artist,  not  as  the  reason  that  shapes,  but  as  the  inter- 
preter of  his  conceptions  into  words,  there  is  a  distinction  to 
be  noticed  between  the  higher  and  lower  mode  in  which  it 
performs  its  function.  It  may  be  either  creative  or  pictorial, 
may  body  forth  the  thought  or  merely  image  it  forth.  With 
Shakespeare,  for  example,  imagination  seems  immanent  in 
his  very  consciousness  ;  with  Milton,  in  his  memory.  In 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  387 

the  one  it  sends,  as  if  without  knowing  it,  a  fiery  life  into 
the  verse — 

"  Sei  die  Braut  das  Wort, 
Brautigam  der  Geist "  ; 

in  the  other  it  elaborates  a  certain  pomp  and  elevation. 
Accordingly,  the  bias  of  the  former  is  toward  over-intensity, 
of  the  latter  toward  over-diffusiveness.  Shakespeare's  temp- 
tation is  to  push  a  willing  metaphor  beyond  its  strength,  to 
make  a  passion  over-inform  its  tenement  of  words ;  Milton 
can  not  resist  running  a  simile  on  into  a  fugue.  One  always 
fancies  Shakespeare  in  his  best  verses,  and  Milton  at  the 
key-board  of  his  organ.  Shakespeare's  language  is  no  longer 
the  mere  vehicle  of  thought,  it  has  become  part  of  it,  its  very 
flesh  and  blood.  The  pleasure  it  gives  us  is  unmixed,  di- 
rect, like  that  from  the  smell  of  a  flower  or  the  flavor  of  a 
fruit.  Milton  sets  everywhere  his  little  pitfalls  of  bookish 
association  for  the  memory.  I  know  that  Milton's  manner 
is  very  grand.  It  is  slow,  it  is  stately,  moving  as  in  tri- 
umphal procession,  with  music,  with  historic  banners,  with 
spoils  from  every  time  and  every  region,  and  captive  epi- 
thets, like  huge  Sicambrians,  thrust  their  broad  shoulders 
between  us  and  the  thought  whose  pomp  they  decorate. 
But  it  is  manner,  nevertheless,  as  is  proved  by  the  ease 
with  which  it  is  parodied,  by  the  danger  it  is  in  of  degen- 
erating into  mannerism  whenever  it  forgets  itself.  Fancy  a 
parody  of  Shakespeare — I  do  not  mean  of  his  words,  but  of 
his  tone,  for  that  is  what  distinguishes  the  master.  You 
might  as  well  try  it  with  the  Venus  of  Milo.  In  Shake- 
speare it  is  always  the  higher  thing,  the  thought,  the  fancy, 
that  is  preeminent ;  it  is  Caesar  that  draws  all  eyes,  and  not 


388  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

the  chariot  in  which  he  rides,  or  the  throng  which  is  but  the 
reverberation  of  his  supremacy.  If  not,  how  explain  the 
charm  with  which  he  dominates  in  all  tongues,  even  under 
the  disenchantment  of  translation  ?  Among  the  most  alien 
races  he  is  as  solidly  at  home  as  a  mountain  seen  from  dif- 
ferent sides  by  many  lands,  itself  superbly  solitary,  yet  the 
companion  of  all  thoughts  and  domesticated  in  all  imagina- 
tions. 

In  description  Shakespeare  is  especially  great,  and  in 
that  instinct  which  gives  the  peculiar  quality  of  any  object 
of  contemplation  in  a  single  happy  word  that  colors  the  im- 
pression on  the  sense  with  the  mood  of  the  mind.  Most 
descriptive  poets  seem  to  think  that  a  hogshead  of  water 
caught  at  the  spout  will  give  us  a  livelier  notion  of  a  thun- 
der-shower than  the  sullen  muttering  of  the  first  big  drops 
upon  the  roof.  They  forget  that  it  is  by  suggestion,  not 
cumulation,  that  profound  impressions  are  made  upon  the 
imagination.  Milton's  parsimony  (so  rare  in  him)  makes 
the  success  of  his 

"  Sky  lowered,  and,  muttering  thunder,  some  sad  drops 
Wept  at  completion  of  the  mortal  sin." 

Shakespeare  understood  perfectly  the  charm  of  indirect- 
ness, of  making  his  readers  seem  to  discover  for  themselves 
what  he  means  to  show  them.  If  he  wishes  to  tell  that  the 
leaves  of  the  willow  are  gray  on  the  under  side,  he  does  not 
make  it  a  mere  fact  of  observation  by  bluntly  saying  so,  but 
makes  it  picturesquely  reveal  itself  to  us  as  it  might  in  na- 
ture : 

"  There  is  a  willow  grows  athwart  the  flood, 
That  shows  his  hoar  leaves  in  the  glassy  stream." 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  389 

Where  he  goes  to  the  landscape  for  a  comparison,  he  does 
not  ransack  wood  and  field  for  specialties,  as  if  he  were 
gathering  simples,  but  takes  one  image,  obvious,  familiar, 
and  makes  it  new  to  us  either  by  sympathy  or  contrast  with 
his  own  immediate  feeling.  He  always  looked  upon  nature 
with  the  eyes  of  the  mind.  Thus  he  can  make  the  melan- 
choly of  autumn  or  the  gladness  of  spring  alike  pathetic  : 

"  That  time  of  year  thou  mayst  in  me  behold, 
When  yellow  leaves  or  few,  or  none,  do  hang 
Upon  those  boughs  that  shake  against  the  cold, 
Bare  ruined  choirs  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang." 

Of  again  : 

"  From  thee  have  I  been  absent  in  the  spring, 
When  proud-pied  April,  dressed  in  all  his  trim, 
Hath  put  a  spirit  of  youth  in  everything, 
That  heavy  Saturn  leaped  and  laughed  with  him." 

But  as  dramatic  poet,  Shakespeare  goes  even  beyond 
this,  entering  so  perfectly  into  the  consciousness  of  the 
characters  he  himself  has  created,  that  he  sees  everything 
through  their  peculiar  mood,  and  makes  every  epithet,  as  if 
unconsciously,  echo  and  reecho  it.  Theseus  asks  Hermia — 

"  Can  you  endure  the  livery  of  a  nun, 
For  aye  to  be  in  shady  cloister  mewed, 
To  live  a  barren  sister  all  your  life, 
Chanting  faint  hymns  to  the  coldfruitkss  moon  ?  " 

When  Romeo  must  leave  Juliet,  the  private  pang  of  the 
lovers  becomes  a  property  of  Nature  herself,  and 

" .  .  .  .  envious  streaks 
Do  lace  the  severing  clouds  in  yonder  east." 


390 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


But  even  more  striking  is  the  following  instance  from  "  Mac- 
beth " : 

" .  .  .  .  the  raven  himself  is  hoarse 
That  croaks  the  fatal  enterance  of  Duncan 
Under  your  battlements." 

Here  Shakespeare,  with  his  wonted  tact,  makes  use  of  a  vul- 
gar superstition,  of  a  type  in  which  mortal  presentiment  is 
already  embodied,  to  make  a  common  ground  on  which  the 
hearer  and  Lady  Macbeth  may  meet.  After  this  prelude  we 
are  prepared  to  be  possessed  by  her  emotion  more  fully,  to 
feel  in  her  ears  the  dull  tramp  of  the  blood  that  seems  to 
make  the  raven's  croak  yet  hoarser  than  it  is,  and  to  betray 
the  stealthy  advance  of  the  mind  to  its  fell  purpose.  For 
Lady  Macbeth  hears  not  so  much  the  voice  of  the  bodeful 
bird  as  of  her  own  premeditated  murder,  and  we  are  thus 
made  her  shuddering  accomplices  before  the  fact.  Every 
image  receives  the  color  of  the  mind,  every  word  throbs 
with  the  pulse  of  one  controlling  passion.  The  epithet 
fatal  makes  us  feel  the  implacable  resolve  of  the  speaker, 
and  shows  us  that  she  is  tampering  with  her  conscience  by 
putting  off  the  crime  upon  the  prophecy  of  the  Weird  Sis- 
ters to  which  she  alludes.  In  the  word  battlements,  too,  not 
only  is  the  fancy  led  up  to  the  perch  of  the  raven,  but  a 
hostile  image  takes  the  place  of  a  hospitable ;  for  men  com- 
monly speak  of  receiving  a  guest  under  their  roof  or  within 
their  doors.  That  this  is  not  over-ingenuity,  seeing  what  is 
not  to  be  seen,  nor  meant  to  be  seen,  is  clear  to  me  from 
what  follows.  When  Duncan  and  Banquo  arrive  at  the 
castle,  their  fancies,  free  from  all  suggestion  of  evil,  call 
up  only  gracious  and  amiable  images.  The  raven  was  but 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  391 

the  fantastical  creation  of  Lady  Macbeth's  overwrought 
brain : 

"  This  castle  has  a  pleasant  seat,  the  air 
Nimbly  and  sweetly  doth  commend  itself 
Unto  our  gentle  senses. 

This  guest  of  summer, 
The  temple-haunting  martlet,  doth  approve 
By  his  loved  mansionry  that  the  heaven's  breath 
Smells  ivooingly  here  ;  no  jutty,  frieze, 
Buttress,  or  coigne  of  vantage,  but  this  bird 
Hath  made  his  pendent  bed  and  procreant  cradle." 

The  contrast  here  can  not  but  be  as  intentional  as  it  is 
marked.  Every  image  is  one  of  welcome,  security,  and  con- 
fidence. The  summer,  one  may  well  fancy,  would  be  a  very 
different  hostess  from  her  whom  we  have  just  seen  expecting 
them.  And  why  temple-haunting,  unless  because  it  suggests 
sanctuary  ?  O  immaginativa,  che  si  ne  rubi  delle  cose  di  fuor, 
how  infinitely  more  precious  are  the  inward  ones  thou  givest 
in  return  !  If  all  this  be  accident,  it  is  at  least  one  of  those 
accidents  of  which  only  this  man  was  ever  capable.  I 
divine  something  like  it  now  and  then  in  ^Eschylus,  through 
the  mists  of  a  language  which  will  not  let  me  be  sure  of 
what  I  see,  but  nowhere  else.  Shakespeare,  it  is  true,  had, 
as  respects  English,  the  privilege  which  only  first-comers 
enjoy.  The  language  was  still  fresh  from  those  sources  at 
too  great  a  distance  from  which  it  becomes  fit  only  for  the 
service  of  prose.  Wherever  he  dipped,  it  came  up  clear  and 
sparkling,  undefiled  as  yet  by  the  drainage  of  literary  facto- 
ries, or  of  those  dye-houses  where  the  machine-woven  fab- 
rics of  sham  culture  are  colored  up  to  the  last  desperate 
style  of  sham  sentiment.  Those  who  criticise  his  diction  as 


39z  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

sometimes  extravagant  should  remember  that  in  poetry  lan- 
guage is  something  more  than  merely  the  vehicle  of  thought, 
that  it  is  meant  to  convey  the  sentiment  as  much  as  the 
sense,  and  that,  if  there  is  a  beauty  of  use,  there  is  often  a 
higher  use  of  beauty. 

What  kind  of  culture  Shakespeare  had  is  uncertain ;  how 
much  he  had  is  disputed;  that  he  had  as  much  as  he 
wanted,  and  of  whatever  kind  he  wanted,  must  be  clear  to 
whoever  considers  the  question.  Dr.  Farmer  has  proved,  in 
his  entertaining  essay,  that  he  got  everything  at  second  hand 
from  translations,  and  that,  where  his  translator  blundered, 
he  loyally  blundered  too.  But  Goethe,  the  man  of  widest 
acquirement  in  modern  times,  did  precisely  the  same  thing. 
In  his  character  of  poet  he  set  as  little  store  by  useless 
learning  as  Shakespeare  did.  He  learned  to  write  hex- 
ameters, not  from  Homer,  but  from  Voss,  and  Voss  found 
them  faulty ;  yet  somehow  "  Hermann  und  Dorothea "  is 
more  readable  than  "Luise."  So  far  as  all  the  classicism 
then  attainable  was  concerned,  Shakespeare  got  it  as  cheap 
as  Goethe  did,  who  always  bought  it  ready-made.  For 
such  purposes  of  mere  aesthetic  nourishment  Goethe  always 
milked  other  minds — if  minds  those  ruminators  and  digest- 
ers of  antiquity  into  asses'  milk  may  be  called.  There  were 
plenty  of  professors  who  were  for  ever  assiduously  browsing 
in  vales  of  Enna  and  on  Pentelican  slopes  among  the  ves- 
tiges of  antiquity,  slowly  secreting  lacteous  facts,  and  not 
one  of  them  would  have  raised  his  head  from  that  exquisite 
pasturage,  though  Pan  had  made  music  through  his  pipe  of 
reeds.  Did  Goethe  wish  to  work  up  a  Greek  theme  ?  He 
drove  out  Herr  Bottiger,  for  example,  among  that  fodder 
delicious  to  him  for  its  very  dryness,  that  sapless  Arcadia  of 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


393 


scholiasts,  let  him  graze,  ruminate,  and  go  through  all  other 
needful  processes  of  the  antiquarian  organism,  then  got  him 
quietly  into  a  corner  and  milked  him.  The  product,  after 
standing  long  enough,  mantled  over  with  the  rich  Goethean 

cream,  from  which  a  butter  could  be  churned,  if  not  pre- 

* 

cisely  classic,  quite  as  good  as  the  ancients  could  have  made 
out  of  the  same  material.  But  who  has  ever  read  the 
"  Achilleis,"  correct  in  all  ^essential  particulars  as  it  proba- 
bly is  ? 

It  is  impossible  to  conceive  that  a  man  who  in  other  re- 
spects made  such  booty  of  the  world  around  him,  whose 
observation  of  manners  was  so  minute,  and  whose  insight 
into  character  and  motives,  as  if  he  had  been  one  of  God's 
spies,  was  so  unerring  that  we  accept  it  without  question,  as 
we  do  Nature  herself,  and  find  it  more  consoling  to  explain 
his  confessedly  immense  superiority  by  attributing  it  to  a 
happy  instinct  rather  than  to  the  conscientious  perfecting  of 
exceptional  powers  till  practice  made  them  seem  to  work 
independently  of  the  will  which  still  directed  them — it  is 
impossible  that  such  a  man  should  not  also  have  profited  by 
the  converse  of  the  cultivated  and  quick-witted  men  in 
whose  familiar  society  he  lived,  that  he  should  not  have 
over  and  over  again  discussed  points  of  criticism  and  art 
with  them,  that  he  should  not  have  had  his  curiosity,  so  alive 
to  everything  else,  excited  about  those  ancients  whom  uni- 
versity men  then,  no  doubt,  as  now,  extolled  without  too 
much  knowledge  of  what  they  really  were,  that  he  should 
not  have  heard  too  much  rather  than  too  little  of  Aris- 
totle's "  Poetics,"  Quintilian's  "Rhetoric,"  Horace's  "  Art  of 
Poetry,"  and  the  "  Unities,"  especially  from  Ben  Jonson — 
in  short,  that  he  who  speaks  of  himself  as — 


394  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

"  Desiring  this  man's  art  and  that  man's  scope, 
With  what  he  most  enjoyed  contented  least," 

and  who  meditated  so  profoundly  on  every  other  topic  of 
human  concern,  should  never  have  turned  his  thought  to 
the  principles  of  that  art  which  was  both  the  delight  and 
business  of  his  life,  the  bread-winner  alike  for  soul  and 
body.  Was  there  no  harvest  of  the  ear  for  him  whose  eye 
had  stocked  its  garners  so  full  as  well-nigh  to  forestall  all 
after-comers?  Did  he  who  could  so  counsel  the  practicers 
of  an  art  in  which  he  never  arrived  at  eminence,  as  in  Ham- 
let's advice  to  the  players,  never  take  counsel  with  him- 
self about  that  other  art  in  which  the  instinct  of  the  crowd, 
no  less  than  the  judgment  of  his  rivals,  awarded  him  an 
easy  preeminence  ?  If  he  had  little  Latin  and  less  Greek, 
might  he  not  have  had  enough  of  both  for  every  practical 
purpose  on  this  side  pedantry?  The  most  extraordinary, 
one  might  almost  say  contradictory,  attainments  have  been 
ascribed  to  him,  and  yet  he  has  been  supposed  incapable  of 
what  was  within  easy  reach  of  every  boy  at  Westminster 
School.  There  is  a  knowledge  that  comes  of  sympathy  as 
living  and  genetic  as  that  which  comes  of  mere  learning  is 
sapless  and  unprocreant,  and  for  this  no  profound  study  of 
the  languages  is  needed. 

If  Shakespeare  did  not  know  the  ancients,  I  think  they 
were  at  least  as  unlucky  in  not  knowing  him.  But  is  it  in- 
credible that  he  may  have  laid  hold  of  an  edition  of  the 
Greek  tragedians,  Graed  et  Latint,  and  then,  with  such  poor 
wits  as  he  was  master  of,  contrived  to  worry  'some  consid- 
erable meaning  out  of  them  ?  There  are  at  least  one  or  two 
coincidences  which,  whether  accidental  or  not,  are  curious, 
and  which  I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  noticed.  In  the 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  395 

"Electra"  of  Sophocles,  which  is  almost  identical  in  its 
leading  motive  with  "Hamlet,"  the  Chorus  consoles  Electra 
for  the  supposed  death  of  Orestes  in  the  same  commonplace 
way  which  Hamlet's  uncle  tries  with  him  : 

Qvqrov  7T£0u/«z?  Trarpdf  ,  'H/U/crpa,  (pj)6vei' 
Qvrjrbq  6'  'Qpearrjq  '  ware  p)  Tiiav  arkvt, 
Haaiv  yap  rjfuv  TOVT'  bQeiherai  Tradelv. 

"  Your  father  lost  a  father  ; 
That  father  lost,  lost  his.  .  .  . 

But  to  persever 

In  obstinate  condolement  is  a  course 
Of  impious  stubbornness.  .  .  . 

'Tis  common  ;  all  that  live  must  die." 

Shakespeare  expatiates  somewhat  more  largely,  but  the  sen- 
timent in  both  cases  is  almost  verbally  identical.  The  re- 
semblance is  probably  a  chance  one,  for  commonplace  and 
consolation  were  always  twin  sisters,  whom  always  to  escape 
is  given  to  no  man  ;  but  it  is  nevertheless  curious.  Here  is 
another,  from  the  "  OEdipus  Coloneus  :  " 

ToZf  TOI  StKaiois  x&  PpaXV£  viKq,  ph/av, 
"  Thrice  is  he  armed  that  hath  his  quarrel  just." 

The  Greek  dramatists  were  somewhat  fond  of  a  trick  of 
words  in  which  there  is  a  reduplication  of  sense  as  well  as 
of  assonance,*  as  in  the  "  Electra  "  — 

AAe/crpa  yrjpaoKovoav  avvjutvaia  re. 

*  The  best  instance  I  remember  is  in  "  The  Frogs,"  where  Bacchus 
pleads  his  inexperience  at  the  oar,  and  says  he  is 


which  might  be  rendered  — 

"  Unskilled,  unsea-soned,  and  un-Salamised." 


396  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

So  Shakespeare — 

"  Unhouselled,  disappointed,  unaneled  "  ; 
and  Milton  after  him,  or,  more  likely,  after  the  Greek — 

"  Unrespited,  unpitied,  unreprieved." 

I  mention  these  trifles,  in  passing,  because  they  have  in- 
terested me,  and  therefore  may  interest  others.  I  lay  no 
stress  upon  them,  for,  if  once  the  conductors  of  Shake- 
speare's intelligence  had  been  put  in  connection  with  those 
Attic  brains,  he  would  have  reproduced  their  message  in  a 
form  of  his  own.  They  would  have  inspired,  and  not 
enslaved  him.  His  resemblance  to  them  is  that  of  con- 
sanguinity, more  striking  in  expression  than  in  mere  resem- 
blance of  feature.  The  likeness  between  the  Clytemnestra — 
yvvaiKos  avdpoftovhov  ekmfrv  Keap — of  ^Eschylus  and  the 
Lady  Macbeth  of  Shakespeare  was  too  remarkable  to  have 
escaped  notice.  That  between  the  two  poets  in  their  choice 
of  epithets  is  as  great,  though  more  difficult  of  proof.  Yet  I 
think  an  attentive  student  of  Shakespeare  can  not  fail  to  be 
reminded  of  something  familiar  to  him  in  such  phrases  as 
"  flame-eyed  fire,"  "  flax-winged  ships,"  "  star-neighboring 
peaks,"  the  rock  Salmydessus — 

"  .  .  .  .  Rude  jaw  of  the  sea, 
Harsh  hostess  of  the  seaman,  step-mother 
Of  ships"—   . 

and  the  beacon  with  its  "speaking  eye  of  fire."  Surely  there 
is  more  than  a  verbal,  there  is  a  genuine,  similarity  between 
the  avfipidpov  ye^ao^a  and  "  the  unnumbered  beach  "  and 
"multitudinous  sea."  ^Eschylus,  it  seems  to  me,  is  willing, 
just  as  Shakespeare  is,  to  risk  the  prosperity  of  a  verse  upon 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


397 


a  lucky  throw  of  words,  which  may  come  up  the  sices 
of  hardy  metaphor  or  the  ambsace  of  conceit.  There  is 
such  a  difference  between  far-reaching  and  far-fetching! 
Poetry,  to  be  sure,  is  always  that  daring  one  step  beyond, 
which  brings  the  right  man  to  fortune,  but  leaves  the 
wrong  one  in  the  ditch,  and  its  law  is,  "  Be  bold  once 
and  again,  yet  be  not  over-bold."  It  is  true,  also,  that 
masters  of  language  are  a  little  apt  to  play  with  it.  But 
whatever  fault  may  be  found  with  Shakespeare  in  this 
respect  will  touch  a  tender  spot  in  ^Eschylus  also.  Does 
he  sometimes  overload  a  word,  so  that  the  language  not 
merely,  as  Dryden  says,  bends  under  him,  but  fairly  gives 
way,  and  lets  the  reader's  mind  down  with  the  shock 
as  of  a  false  step  in  taste  ?  He  has  nothing  worse  than 
TreAayof  avBovv  veicpolg.  A  criticism,  shallow  in  hu- 
man nature,  however  deep  in  Campbell's  "  Rhetoric," 
has  blamed  him  for  making  persons,  under  great  ex- 
citement of  sorrow,  or  whatever  other  emotion,  paren- 
thesize some  trifling  play  upon  words  in  the  very  height 
of  their  passion.  Those  who  make  such  criticisms  have 
either  never  felt  a  passion  or  seen  one  in  action,  or  else 
they  forget  the  exaltation  of  sensibility  during  such  crises, 
so  that  the  attention,  whether  of  the  senses  or  the  mind, 
is  arrested  for  the  moment  by  what  would  be  overlooked 
in  ordinary  moods.  The  more  forceful  the  current,  the 
more  sharp  the  ripple  from  any  alien  substance  inter- 
posed. A  passion  that  looks  forward,  like  revenge,  or 
lust,  or  greed,  goes  right  to  its  end,  and  is  straightforward 
in  its  expression ;  but  a  tragic  passion,  which  is  in  its 
nature  unavailing,  like  disappointment,  regret  of  the  in- 
evitable, or  remorse,  is  reflective,  and  liable  to  be  continu- 


398  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

ally  diverted  by  the  suggestions  of  fancy.  The  one  is  a 
concentration  of  the  will,  which  intensifies  the  character 
and  the  phrase  that  expresses  it ;  in  the  other,  the  will  is 
helpless,  and,  as  in  insanity,  while  the  flow  of  the  mind 
sets  imperatively  in  one  direction,  it  is  liable  to  almost  ludi- 
crous interruptions  and  diversions  upon  the  most  trivial 
hint  of  involuntary  association.  I  am  ready  to  grant  that 
Shakespeare  sometimes  allows  his  characters  to  spend  time 
that  might  be  better  employed  in  carving  some  cherry- 
stone of  a  quibble;  that  he  is  sometimes  tempted  away 
from  the  natural  by  the  quaint ;  that  he  sometimes  forces 
a  partial,,  even  a  verbal  analogy  between  the  abstract 
thought  and  the  sensual  image  into  an  absolute  identity, 
giving  us  a  kind  of  serious  pun.  In  a  pun  our  pleasure 
arises  from  a  gap  in  the  logical  nexus  too  wide  for  the 
reason,  but  which  the  ear  can  bridge  in.  an  instant.  "  Is 
that  your  own  hare,  or  a  wig  ?  "  The  fancy  is  yet  more 
tickled  where  logic  is  treated  with  a  mock  ceremonial 
of  respect : 

"  His  head  was  turned,  and  so  he  chewed 
His  pigtail  till  he  died." 

Now,  when  this  kind  of  thing  is  done  in  earnest,  the 
result  is  one  of  those  ill-distributed  syllogisms  which  in 
rhetoric  are  called  conceits : 

"  Hard  was  the  hand  that  struck  the  blow, 
Soft  was  the  heart  that  bled." 

I  have  seen  this  passage  from  Warner  cited  for  its  beauty, 
though  I  should  have  thought  nothing  could  be  worse,  had 
I  not  seen  General  Morris's 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  399 

"  Her  heart  and  morning  broke  together 
In  tears." 

Of  course,  I  would  not  rank  with  these  Gloucester's 

"  What  !  will  the  aspiring  blood  of  Lancaster 
Sink  in  the  ground  ?     I  thought  it  would  have  mounted  "  ; 

though  as  mere  rhetoric  it  belongs  to  the  same  class.*  It 
might  be  defended  as  a  bit  of  ghastly  humor  characteristic 
of  the  speaker.  But  at  any  rate  it  is  not  without  precedent 
in  the  two  greater  .Greek  tragedians.  In  a  chorus  of  the 
"  Seven  against  Thebes  "  we  have  : 

.  .  .  .  kv  tie  jaiq. 
Zua  (j>ovopvrti 

Kapra  6'  el<? 


And  does  not  Sophocles  make  Ajax  in  his  despair  quibble 
upon  his  own  name  quite  in  the  Shakespearean  fashion, 
under  similar  circumstances  ?  Nor  does  the  coarseness 
with  which  our  great  poet  is  reproached  lack  an  ^Eschylean 
parallel.  Even  the  Nurse  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet  "  would 
have  found  a  true  gossip  in  her  of  the  "  Agamemnon,"  who 
is  so  indiscreet  in  her  confidences  concerning  the  nursery- 
life  of  Orestes.  Whether  Raleigh  is  right  or  not  in  warning 
historians  against  following  truth  too  close  upon  the  heels, 
the  caution  is  a  good  one  for  poets  as  respects  truth  to  na- 
ture. But  it  is  a  mischievous  fallacy  in  historian  or  critic 
to  treat  as  a  blemish  of  the  man  what  is  but  the  common 


*  I  have  taken  the  first  passage  in  point  that  occurred  to  my  memory. 
It  may  not  be  Shakespeare's,  though  probably  his.  The  question  of 
authorship  is,  I  think,  settled,  so  far  as  criticism  can  do  it,  in  Mr.  White's 
admirable  essay  appended  to  the  "  Second  Part  of  Henry  VI." 


400  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

tincture  of  his  age.     It  is  to  confound  a  spatter  of  mud  with 
a  moral  stain. 

But  I  have  been  led  away  from  my  immediate  purpose. 
I  did  not  intend  to  compare  Shakespeare  with  the  ancients, 
much  less  to  justify  his  defects  by  theirs.  In  the  fine  arts  a 
thing  is  either  good  in  itself  or  it  is  nothing.  It  neither 
gains  nor  loses  by  having  it  shown  that  another  good  thing 
was  also  good  in  itself,  any  more  than  a  bad  thing  profits 
by  comparison  with  another  that  is  worse.  The  final  judg- 
ment of  the  world  is  intuitive,  and  is  based,  not  on  proof 
that  a  work  possesses  some  of  the  qualities  of  another  whose 
greatness  is  acknowledged,  but  on  the  immediate  feeling 
that  it  carries  to  a  high  point  of  perfection  certain  qualities 
proper  to  itself.  One  does  not  flatter  a  fine  pear  by  com- 
paring it  to  a  fine  peach,  nor  learn  what  a  fine  peach  is  by 
tasting  ever  so  many  poor  ones.  The  boy  who  makes  his 
first  bite  into  one  does  not  need  to  ask  his  father  if  or  how 
or  why  it  is  good.  Because  continuity  is  a  merit  in  some 
kinds  of  writing,  shall  we  refuse  ourselves  to  the  authentic 
charm  of  Montaigne's  want  of  it?  I  have  heard  people 
complain  of  French  tragedies  because  they  were  so  very 
French.  This,  though  it  may  not  be  to  some  particular 
tastes,  and  may  from  one  point  of  view  be  a  defect,  is  from 
another  and  far  higher  a  distinguished  merit.  It  is  their 
flavor,  as  direct  a  telltale  of  the  soil  whence  they  drew  it  as 
French  wines  are.  Suppose  we  should  tax  the  Elgin  mar- 
bles with  being  too  Greek  ?  When  will  people,  nay,  when 
will  even  critics,  get  over  this  self-defrauding  trick  of  cheap- 
ening the  excellence  of  one  thing  by  that  of  another,  this 
conclusive  style  of  judgment  which  consists  simply  in  be- 
longing to  the  other  parish  ?  As  one  grows  older,  one  loses 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  4Oi 

many  idols,  perhaps  comes  at  last  to  have  none  at  all,  though 
he  may  honestly  enough  uncover  in  deference  to  the  wor- 
shipers before  any  shrine.  But  for  the  seeming  loss  the 
compensation  is  ample.  These  saints  of  literature  descend 
from  their  canopied  remoteness  to  be  even  more  precious  as 
men  like  ourselves,  our  companions  in  field  and  street, 
speaking  the  same  tongue,  though  in  many  dialects,  and 
owning  one  creed  under  the  most  diverse  masks  of  form. 

Much  of  that  merit  of  structure  which  is  claimed  for  the 
ancient  tragedy  is  due,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  to  circum- 
stances external  to  the  drama  itself — to  custom,  to  conven- 
tion, to  the  exigencies  of  the  theatre.  It  is  formal  rather 
than  organic.  The  "  Prometheus  "  seems  to  me  one  of  the 
few  Greek  tragedies  in  which  the  whole  creation  has  devel- 
oped itself  in  perfect  proportion  from  one  central  germ  of 
living  conception.  The  motive  of  the  ancient  drama  is 
generally  outside  of  it,  while  in  the  modern  (at  least  in  the 
English)  it  is  necessarily  within.  Goethe,  in  a  thoughtful 
essay,*  written  many  years  later  than  his  famous  criticism 
of  "Hamlet"  in  "Wilhelm  Meister,"  says  that  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  two  is  the  difference  between  sollen  and  wol- 
len,  that  is,  between  must  and  would.  He  means  that  in  the 
Greek  drama  the  catastrophe  is  foreordained  by  an  inexora- 
ble destiny,  while  the  element  of  free  will,  and  consequently 
of  choice,  is  the  very  axis  of  the  modern.  The  definition 
is  conveniently  portable,  but  it  has  its  limitations.  Goethe's 
attention  was  too  exclusively  fixed  on  the  Fate  tragedies  of 
the  Greeks,  and  upon  Shakespeare  among  the  moderns.  In 
the  Spanish  drama,  for  example,  custom,  loyalty,  honor,  and 


*  Shakspeare  und  sein  Ende. 
26 


402  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

religion  are  as  imperative  and  as  inevitable  as  doom.  In  the 
"  Antigone,"  on  the  other  hand,  the  crisis  lies  in  the  charac- 
ter of  the  protagonist.  In  this  sense  it  is  modern,  and  is 
the  first  example  of  true  character-painting  in  tragedy.  But, 
from  whatever  cause,  that  exquisite  analysis  of  complex 
motives,  and  the  display  of  them  in  action  and  speech, 
which  constitute  for  us  the  abiding  charm  of  fiction,  were 
quite  unknown  to  the  ancients.  They  reached  their  height 
in  Cervantes  and  Shakespeare,  and,  though  on  a  lower  plane, 
still  belong  to  the  upper  region  of  art  in  Le  Sage,  Moliere, 
and  Fielding.  The  personages  of  the  Greek  tragedy  seem 
to  be  commonly  rather  types  than  individuals.  In  the  mod- 
ern tragedy,  certainly  in  the  four  greatest  of  Shakespeare's 
tragedies,  there  is  still  something  very  like  Destiny,  only  the 
place  of  it  is  changed.  It  is  no  longer  above  man,  but  in 
him ;  yet  the  catastrophe  is  as  sternly  foredoomed  in  the 
characters  of  Lear,  Othello,  Macbeth,  and  Hamlet  as  it 
could  be  by  an  infallible  oracle.  In  "  Macbeth,"  indeed, 
the  Weird  Sisters  introduce  an  element  very  like  Fate ;  but 
generally  it  may  be  said  that  with  the  Greeks  the  character 
is  involved  in  the  action,  while  with  Shakespeare  the  action 
is  evolved  from  the  character.  In  the  one  case,  the  motive 
of  the  play  controls  the  personages ;  in  the  other,  the  chief 
personages  are  in  themselves  the  motive  to  which  all  else  is 
subsidiary.  In  any  comparison,  therefore,  of  Shakespeare 
with  the  ancients,  we  are  not  to  contrast  him  with  them  as 
unapproachable  models,  but  to  consider  whether  he,  like 
them,  did  not  consciously  endeavor,  under  the  circumstances 
and  limitations  in  which  he  found  himself,  to  produce  the 
most  excellent  thing  possible,  a  model  also  in  its  own  kind 
— whether  higher  or  lower  in  degree  is  another  question. 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  403 

The  only  fair  comparison  would  be  between  him  and  that 
one  of  his  contemporaries  who  endeavored  to  anachronize 
himself,  so  to  speak,  and  to  subject  his  art,  so  far  as  might 
be,  to  the  laws  of  classical  composition.  Ben  Jonson  was  a 
great  man,  and  has  sufficiently  proved  that  he  had  an  eye 
for  the  external  marks  of  character;  but  when  he  would 
make  a  whole  of  them,  he  gives  us  instead  either  a  bundle 
of  humors  or  an  incorporated  idea.  With  Shakespeare  the* 
plot  is  an  interior  organism,  in  Jonson  an  external  contriv- 
ance. It  is  the  difference  between  man  and  tortoise.  In 
the  one  the  osseous  structure  is  out  of  sight,  indeed,  but  sus- 
tains the  flesh  and  blood  that  envelop  it,  while  the  other  is 
boxed  up  and  imprisoned  in  his  bones. 

I  have  been  careful  to  confine  myself  to  what  may  be 
called  Shakespeare's  ideal  tragedies.  In  the  purely  histori- 
cal or  chronicle  plays,  the  conditions  are  different,  and  his 
imagination  submits  itself  to  the  necessary  restrictions  on 
its  freedom  of  movement.  Outside  the  tragedies  also,  "  The 
Tempest"  makes  an  exception  worthy  of  notice.  If  I 
read  it  rightly,  it  is  an  example  of  how  a  great  poet  should 
write  allegory — not  embodying  metaphysical  abstractions, 
but  giving  us  ideals  abstracted  from  life  itself,  suggesting  an 
under-meaning  everywhere,  forcing  it  upon  us  nowhere,  tan- 
talizing the  mind  with  hints  that  imply  so  much  and  tell  so 
little,  and  yet  keep  the  attention  all  eye  and  ear  with  eager,  if 
fruitless,  expectation.  Here  the  leading  characters  are  not 
merely  typical,  but  symbolical — that  is,  they  do  not  illustrate 
a  class  of  persons,  they  belong  to  universal  nature.  Con- 
sider the  scene  of  the  play.  Shakespeare  is  wont  to  take 
some  familiar  story,  to  lay  his  scene  in  some  place  the  name 
of  which,  at  least,  is  familiar — well  knowing  the  reserve  of 


4o4  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

power  that  lies  in  the  familiar  as  a  background,  when  things 
are  set  in  front  of  it  under  a  new  and  unexpected  light. 
But  in  "  The  Tempest "  the  scene  is  laid  nowhere,  or  cer- 
tainly in  no  country  laid  down  on  any  map.  Nowhere,  then  ? 
At  once  nowhere  and  anywhere — for  it  is  in  the  soul  of 
man,  that  still  vexed  island  hung  between  the  upper  and  the 
nether  world,  and  liable  to  incursions  from  both.  There  is 
scarce  a  play  of  Shakespeare's  in  which  there  is  such  variety 
of  character,  none  in  which  character  has  so  little  to  do  in 
the  carrying  on  and  development  of  the  story.  But  con- 
sider for  a  moment  if  ever  the  imagination  has  been  so 
embodied  as  in  Prospero,  the  fancy  as  in  Ariel,  the  brute 
understanding  as  in  Caliban,  who,  the  moment  his  poor  wits 
are  warmed  with  the  glorious  liquor  of  Stephano,  plots  re- 
bellion against  his  natural  lord,  the  higher  reason.  Miranda 
is  mere  abstract  womanhood,  as  truly  so  before  she  sees 
Ferdinand  as  Eve  before  she  was  wakened  to  consciousness 
by  the  echo  of  her  own  nature  coming  back  to  her,  the 
same,  and  yet  not  the  same,  from  that  of  Adam.  Ferdi- 
nand, again,  is  nothing  more  than  Youth  compelled  to 
drudge  at  something  he  despises,  till  the  sacrifice  of  will 
and  abnegation  of  self  win  him  his  ideal  in  Miranda.  The 
subordinate  personages  are  simply  types  :  Sebastian  and 
Antonio,  of  weak  character  and  evil  ambition ;  Gonzalo,  of 
average  sense  and  honesty ;  Adrian  and  Francisco,  of  the 
walking  gentlemen  who  serve  to  fill  up  a  world.  They  are 
not  characters  in  the  same  sense  with  lago,  Falstaff,  Shal- 
low, or  Leontius ;  and  it  is  curious  how  every  one  of  them 
loses  his  way  in  this  enchanted  island  of  life,  all  the  victims 
of  one  illusion  after  another,  except  Prospero,  whose  minis- 
ters are  purely  ideal.  The  whole  play,  indeed,  is  a  succes- 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  405 

sion  of  illusions,  winding  up  with  those  solemn  words  of  the 
great  enchanter  who  had  summoned  to  his  service  every 
shape  of  merriment  or  passion,  every  figure  in  the  great 
tragi-comedy  of  life,  and  who  was  now  bidding  farewell  to 
the  scene  of  his  triumphs.  For  in  Prospero  shall  we  not 
recognize  the  Artist  himself — 

"  That  did  not  better  for  his  life  provide 
Than  public  means  which  public  manners  breeds, 
Whence  comes  it  that  his  name  receives  a  brand  " — 

who  has  forfeited  a  shining  place  in  the  world's  eye  by  de- 
votion to  his  art,  and  who,  turned  adrift  on  the  ocean  of 
life  in  the  leaky  carcass  of  a  boat,  has  shipwrecked  on  that 
Fortunate  Island  (as  men  always  do  who  find  their  true 
vocation)  where  he  is  absolute  lord,  making  all  the  powers 
of  nature  serve  him,  but  with  Ariel  and  Caliban  as  special 
ministers?  Of  whom  else  could  he  have  been  thinking, 
when  he  says — 

"  .  .  .  .  Graves,  at  my  command, 
Have  waked  their  sleepers,  oped,  and  let  them  forth, 
By  my  so  potent  art  "  ? 

Was  this  man,  so  extraordinary  from  whatever  side  we 
look  at  him,  who  ran  so  easily  through  the  whole  scale 
of  human  sentiment,  from  the  homely  common  sense  of, 
"  When  two  men  ride  of  one  horse,  one  must  ride  behind," 
to  the  transcendental  subtilty  of — 

"  No,  Time,  thou  shalt  not  boast  that  I  do  change  ; 
Thy  pyramids,  built  up  with  newer  might, 
To  me  are  nothing  novel,  nothing  strange ; 
They  are  but  dressings  of  a  former  sight  " — 


406  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

was  he  alone  so  unconscious  of  powers,  some  part  of  whose 
magic  is  recognized  by  all  mankind,  from  the  schoolboy  to 
the  philosopher,  that  he  merely  sat  by  and  saw  them  go 
without  the  least  notion  what  they  were  about  ?  Was  he  an 
inspired  idiot,  vdtre  bizarre  Shakespeare?  a  vast,  irregular 
genius  ?  a  simple  rustic,  warbling  his  native  wood-notes  wild, 
in  other  words,  insensible  to  the  benefits  of  culture  ?  When 
attempts  have  been  made  at  various  times  to  prove  that  this 
singular  and  seemingly  contradictory  creature,  not  one,  but 
all  mankind's  epitome,  was  a  musician,  a  lawyer,  a  doctor, 
a  Catholic,  a  Protestant,  an  atheist,  an  Irishman,  a  discoverer 
of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  and  finally  that  he  was  not 
himself,  but  somebody  else,  is  it  not  a  little  odd  that  the  last 
thing  anybody  should  have  thought  of  proving  him  was  an 
artist  ?  Nobody  believes  any  longer  that  immediate  inspira- 
tion is  possible  in  modern  times  (as  if  God  had  grown  old) 
— at  least,  nobody  believes  it  of  the  prophets  of  those  days, 
of  John  of  Leyden,  or  Reeves,  or  Muggleton — and  yet 
everybody  seems  to  take  it  for  granted  of  this  one  man 
Shakespeare.  He,  somehow  or  other,  without  knowing  it, 
was  able  to  do  what  none  of  the  rest  of  them,  though  know- 
ing it  all  too  perfectly  well,  could  begin  to  do.  Everybody 
seems  to  get  afraid  of  him  in  turn.  Voltaire  plays  gentleman 
usher  for  him  to  his  countrymen,  and  then,  perceiving  that 
his  countrymen  find  a  favor  in  him  beyond  that  of  "  Zaire  " 
or  "  Mahomed,"  discovers  him  to  be  a  Sauvage  ivre,  sans 
le  moindre  e'tincelle  de  bon  godt,  et  sans  le  -moindre  connoissance 
des  regies.  Goethe,  who  tells  us  that  "  Gotz  von  Berlichin- 
gen  "  was  written  in  the  Shakespearean  manner — and  we 
certainly  should  not  have  guessed  it,  if  he  had  not  blabbed — 
comes  to  the  final  conclusion  that  Shakespeare  was  a  poet, 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  407 

but  not  a  dramatist.     Chateaubriand  thinks  that  he  has  cor- 
rupted art.     "  If,  to  attain,"  he  says,  "  the  height  of  tragic 
art,  it  be  enough  to  heap  together  disparate  scenes  without 
order  and  without   connection,  to   dovetail  the  burlesque 
with  the  pathetic,  to  set  the  water-carrier  beside  the  monarch 
and  the  huckster-wench  beside  the  queen,  who  may  not 
reasonably  flatter  himself  with  being  the  rival  of  the  greatest 
masters  ?     Whoever  should  give  himself  the  trouble  to  re- 
trace a  single  one  of  his  days,  ...  to  keep  a  journal  from 
hour  to  hour,  would  have  made  a  drama  in  the  fashion  of  the 
English  poet."     But  there  are  journals  and  journals,  as  the 
French  say,  and  what  goes  into  them  depends  on  the  eye 
that  gathers  for  them.     It  is  a  long  step  from  St.  Simon  to 
Dangeau,  from  Pepys  to  Thoresby,  from  Shakespeare  even 
to  the  Marquis  de  Chateaubriand.     M.   Hugo  alone,  con- 
vinced that,  as  founder  of  the   French  Romantic  School, 
there  is  a  kind  of  family  likeness  between  himself  and  Shake- 
speare, stands  boldly  forth  to  prove  the  father  as  extravagant 
as  the  son.     Calm  yourself,  M.  Hugo,  you   are  no  more  a 
child  of  his  than  Will  Davenant  was !     But,  after  all,  is  it 
such  a  great  crime  to  produce  something  absolutely  new  in 
a  world  so  tedious  as  ours,  and  so  apt  to  tell  its  old  stories 
over  again  ?     I  do  not  mean  new  in  substance,  but  in  the 
manner  of  presentation.     Surely  the  highest  office  of  a  great 
poet  is  to  show  us  how  much  variety,  freshness,  and  oppor- 
tunity abides  in  the  obvious  and  familiar.     He  invents  no- 
thing, but  seems  rather  to  rediscover  the  world  about  him, 
and  his  penetrating  vision  gives  to  things  of  daily  encounter 
something  of  the  strangeness  of  new  creation.     Meanwhile 
the  changed  conditions  of  modern  life  demand  a  change  in 
the  method  of  treatment.     The  ideal  is  not  a  strait  waist- 


4o8  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

coat.  Because  "  Alexis  and  Dora  "  is  so  charming,  shall  we 
have  no  "  Paul  and  Virginia  "  ?  It  was  the  idle  endeavor  to 
reproduce  the  old  enchantment  in  the  old  way  that  gave  us 
the  pastoral,  sent  to  the  garret  now  with  our  grandmothers' 
achievements  of  the  same  sort  in  worsted.  Every  age  says 
to  its  poets,  like  a  mistress  to  her  lover,  "  Tell  me  what  I 
am  like  " ;  and  he  who  succeeds  in  catching  the  evanescent 
expression  that  reveals  character — which  is  as  much  as  to 
say,  what  is  intrinsically  human — will  be  found  to  have 
caught  something  as  imperishable  as  human  nature  itself. 
Aristophanes,  by  the  vital  and  essential  qualities  of  his 
humorous  satire,  is  already  more  nearly  our  contemporary 
than  Moliere;  and  even  the  "Trouveres,"  careless  and 
trivial  as  they  mostly  are,  could  fecundate  a  great  poet  like 
Chaucer,  and  are  still  delightful  reading. 

The  Attic  tragedy  still  keeps  its  hold  upon  the  loyalty 
of  scholars  through  their  imagination,  or  their  pedantry,  or 
their  feeling  of  an  exclusive  property,  as  may  happen,  and, 
however  alloyed  with  baser  matter,  this  loyalty  is  legitimate 
and  well  bestowed.  But  the  dominion  of  the  Shakespearean 
is  even  wider.  It  pushes  forward  its  boundaries  from  year 
to  year,  and  moves  no  landmark  backward.  Here  Alfieri 
and  Lessing  own  a  common  allegiance ;  and  the  loyalty  to 
him  is  one  not  of  guild  or  tradition,  but  of  conviction  and 
enthusiasm.  Can  this  be  said  of  any  other  modern  ?  of 
robust  Corneille  ?  of  tender  Racine  ?  of  Calderon  even,  with 
his  tropical  warmth  and  vigor  of  production  ?  The  Greeks 
and  he  are  alike  and  alone  in  this,  and  for  the  same  reason, 
that  both  are  unapproachably  the  highest  in  their  kind. 
Call  him  Gothic,  if  you  like,  but  the  inspiring  mind  that 
presided  over  the  growth  of  these  clustered  masses  of  arch 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  409 

and  spire  and  pinnacle  and  buttress  is  neither  Greek  nor 
Gothic — it  is  simply  genius  lending  itself  to  embody  the  new 
desire  of  man's  mind,  as  it  had  embodied  the  old.  After 
all,  to  be  delightful  is  to  be  classic,  and  the  chaotic  never 
pleases  long.  But  manifoldness  is  not  confusion  any  more 
than  formalism  is  simplicity.  If  Shakespeare  rejected  the 
unities,  as  I  think  he  who  complains  of  "  Art  made  tongue- 
tied  by  Authority  "  might  very  well  deliberately  do,  it  was 
for  the  sake  of  an  imaginative  unity  more  intimate  than  any 
of  time  and  place.  The  antique  in  itself  is  not  the  ideal, 
though  its  remoteness  from  the  vulgarity  of  every-day  as- 
sociations helps  to  make  it  seem  so.  The  true  ideal  is  not 
opposed  to  the  real,  nor  is  it  any  artificial  heightening 
thereof,  but  lies  in  it,  and  blessed  are  the  eyes  that  find  it ! 
It  is  the  mem  divinior  which  hides  within  the  actual,  trans- 
figuring matter-of-fact  into  matter-of-meaning  for  him  who 
has  the  gift  of  second-sight.  In  this  sense  Hogarth  is  often 
more  truly  ideal  than  Raphael,  Shakespeare  often  more 
truly  so  than  the  Greeks.  I  think  it  is  a  more  or  less  con- 
scious perception  of  this  ideality,  as  it  is  a  more  or  less  well- 
grounded  persuasion  of  it  as  respects  the  Greeks,  that  as- 
sures to  him,  as  to  them,  and  with  equal  justice,  a  permanent 
supremacy  over  the  minds  of  men.  This  gives  to  his  char- 
acters their  universality,  to  his  thought  its  irradiating  prop- 
erty, while  the  artistic  purpose,  running  through  and  com- 
bining the  endless  variety  of  scene  and  character,  will  alone 
account  for  his  power  of  dramatic  effect.  Goethe  affirmed 
that,  without  Schroder's  prunings  and  adaptations,  Shake- 
speare was  too  undramatic  for  the  German  theatre — that,  if 
the  theory  that  his  plays  should  be  represented  textually 
should  prevail,  he  would  be  driven  from  the  boards.  The 


4io  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

theory  has  prevailed,  and  he  not  only  holds  his  own,  but  is 
acted  oftener  than  ever.  It  is  not  irregular  genius  that  can 
do  this,  for  surely  Germany  need  not  go  abroad  for  what  her 
own  Werners  could  more  than  amply  supply  her  with. 

But  I  would  much  rather  quote  a  fine  saying  than  a  bad 
prophecy  of  a  man  to  whom  I  owe  so  much.  Goethe,  in 
one  of  the  most  perfect  of  his  shorter  poems,  tells  us  that  a 
poem  is  like  a  painted  window.  Seen  from  without  (and 
he  accordingly  justifies  the  Philistine,  who  never  looks  at 
them  otherwise)  they  seem  dingy  and  confused  enough ;  but 
enter,  and  then — 

"  Da  ist's  auf  einmal  farbig  helle, 

Geschicht'  und  Zierath  glanzt  in  Schnelle." 

With  the  same  feeling  he  says  elsewhere  in  prose,  that 
"there  is  a  destructive  criticism  and  a  productive.  The 
former  is  very  easy ;  for  one  has  only  to  set  up  in  his  mind 
any  standard,  any  model,  however  narrow  "  (let  us  say  the 
Greeks),  "  and  then  boldly  assert  that  the  work  under  re- 
view does  not  match  with  it,  and  therefore  is  good  for  no- 
thing— the  matter  is  settled,  and  one  must  at  once  deny  its 
claim.  Productive  criticism  is  a  great  deal  more  difficult ; 
it  asks,  What  did  the  author  propose  to  himself?  Is  what 
he  proposes  reasonable  and  comprehensible?  and  how  far 
has  he  succeeded  in  carrying  it  out  ?  "  It  is  in  applying 
this  latter  kind  of  criticism  to  Shakespeare  that  the  Germans 
have  set  us  an  example  worthy  of  all  commendation.  If 
they  have  been  sometimes  over-subtile,  they  at  least  had 
the  merit  of  first  looking  at  his  works  as  wholes,  as  some- 
thing that  very  likely  contained  an  idea,  perhaps  conveyed 
a  moral,  if  we  could  get  at  it.  The  illumination  lent  us  by 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  4n 

most  of  the  English  commentators  reminds  us  of  the  candles 
which  guides  hold  up  to  show  us  a  picture  in  a  dark  place, 
the  smoke  of  which  gradually  makes  the  work  of  the  artist 
invisible  under  its  repeated  layers.  Lessing,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  opened  the  first  glimpse  in  the  new  direc- 
tion ;  Goethe  followed  with  his  famous  exposition  of  Ham- 
let ;  A.  W.  Schlegel  took  a  more  comprehensive  view  in  his 
"  Lectures,"  which  Coleridge  worked  over  into  English, 
adding  many  fine  criticisms  of  his  own  on  single  passages ; 
and,  finally,  Gervinus  has  devoted  four  volumes  to  a  com- 
ment on  the  plays,  full  of  excellent  matter,  though  pushing 
the  moral  exegesis  beyond  all  reasonable  bounds.*  With 
the  help  of  all  these,  and  especially  of  the  last,  I  shall  apply 
this  theory  of  criticism  to  Hamlet,  not  in  the  hope  of  saying 
anything  new,  but  of  bringing  something  to  the  support  of 
the  thesis  that,  if  Shakespeare  was  skillful  as  a  playwright, 
he  was  even  greater  as  a  dramatist ;  that,  if  his  immediate 
business  was  to  fill  the  theatre,  his  higher  object  was  to 
create  something  which,  by  fulfilling  the  conditions  and 
answering  the  requirements  of  modern  life,  should  as  truly 
deserve  to  be  called  a  "work  of  art  as  others  had  deserved  it 
by  doing  the  same  thing  in  former  times  and  under  other 
circumstances.  Supposing  him  to  have  accepted — con- 
sciously or  not  is  of  little  importance — the  new  terms  of  the 
problem  which  makes  character  the  pivot  of  dramatic  ac- 
tion, and  consequently  the  key  of  dramatic  unity,  how  far 
did  he  succeed  ? 

Before  attempting  my  analysis,  I  must  clear  away  a  little 
rubbish.    Are  such  anachronisms  as  those  of  which  Voltaire 


*  I  do  not  mention  Ulrici's  book,  for  it  seems  to  me  unwieldy  and 
dull — zeal  without  knowledge. 


4i2  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

accuses  Shakespeare  in  "  Hamlet,"  such  as  the  introduction 
of  cannon  before  the  invention  of  gunpowder,  and  making 
Christians  of  the  Danes  three  centuries  too  soon,  of  the 
least  bearing  aesthetically  ?  I  think  not ;  but  as  they  are  of 
a  piece  with  a  great  many  other  criticisms  upon  the  great 
poet,  it  is  worth  while  to  dwell  upon  them  a  moment. 

The  first  demand  we  make  upon  whatever  claims  to  be 
a  work  of  art  (and  we  have  a  right  to  make  it)  is  that  it 
shall  be  in  keeping.  Now  this  propriety  is  of  two  kinds, 
either  extrinsic  or  intrinsic.  In  the  first  I  should  class 
whatever  relates  rather  to  the  body  than  the  soul  of  the 
work,  such  as  fidelity  to  the  facts  of  history  (wherever  that 
is  important),  congruity  of  costume,  and  the  like — in  short, 
whatever  might  come  under  the  head  of  picturesque  truth,  a 
departure  from  which  would  shock  too  rudely  our  precon- 
ceived associations.  I  have  seen  an  Indian  chief  in  French 
books,  and  he  seemed  to  me  almost  tragic ;  but,  put  upon 
the  stage  in  tragedy,  he  would  have  been  ludicrous.  Lich- 
tenberg,  writing  from  London  in  1775,  tells  us  that  Garrick 
played  Hamlet  in  a  suit  of  the  French  fashion,  then  com- 
monly worn,  and  that  he  was  blamed  for  it  by  some  of  the 
critics ;  but,  he  says,  one  hears  no  such  criticism  during  the 
play,  nor  on  the  way  home,  nor  at  supper  afterward,  nor  in- 
deed till  the  emotion  roused  by  the  great  actor  has  had 
time  to  subside.  He  justifies  Garrick,  though  we  should 
not  be  able  to  endure  it  now.  Yet  nothing  would  be  gained 
by  trying  to  make  Hamlet's  costume  true  to  the  assumed 
period  of  the  play,  for  the  scene  of  it  is  laid  in  a  Denmark 
that  has  no  dates. 

In  the  second  and  more  important  category  I  should 
put,  first,  coordination  of  character,  that  is,  a  certain  variety 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


in  harmony  of  the  personages  of  a  drama,  as  in  the  attitudes 
and  coloring  of  the  figures  in  a  pictorial  composition,  so 
that,  while  mutually  relieving  and  setting  off  each  other, 
they  shall  combine  in  the  total  impression  ;  second,  that  sub- 
ordinate truth  to  nature  which  makes  each  character  cohe- 
rent in  itself;  and,  third,  such  propriety  of  costume  and  the 
like  as  shall  satisfy  the  superhistoric  sense,  to  which,  and  to 
which  alone,  the  higher  drama  appeals.  All  these  come 
within  the  scope  of  imaginative  truth.  To  illustrate  my  third 
head  by  an  example.  Tieck  criticises  John  Kemble's  dress- 
ing for  Macbeth  in  a  modern  Highland  costume,  as  being 
ungraceful  without  any  countervailing  merit  of  historical 
exactness.  I  think  a  deeper  reason  for  his  dissatisfaction 
might  be  found  in  the  fact  that  this  garb,  with  its  purely 
modern  and  British  army  associations,  is  out  of  place  on 
Fores  Heath,  and  drags  the  Weird  Sisters  down  with  it  from 
their  proper  imaginative  remoteness  in  the  gloom  of  the  past 
to  the  disenchanting  glare  of  the  footlights.  It  is  not  the  anti- 
quarian, but  the  poetic  conscience,  that  is  wounded.  To 
this,  exactness,  so  far  as  concerns  ideal  representation,  may 
not  only  not  be  truth,  but  may  even  be  opposed  to  it.  An- 
achronisms and  the  like  are  in  themselves  of  no  account, 
and  become  important  only  when  they  make  a  gap  too  wide 
for  our  illusion  to  cross  unconsciously,  that  is,  when  they 
are  anacoluthons  to  the  imagination.  The  aim  of  the  artist 
is  psychologic,  not  historic  truth.  It  is  comparatively  easy 
for  an  author  to  get  up  any  period  with  tolerable  minuteness 
in  externals,  but  readers  and  audiences  find  more  difficulty 
in  getting  them  down,  though  oblivion  swallows  scores  of 
them  at  a  gulp.  The  saving  truth  in  such  matters  is  a  truth 
to  essential  and  permanent  characteristics.  The  Ulysses  of 


414 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


Shakespeare,  like  the  Ulysses  of  Dante  and  Tennyson,  more 
or  less  harmonizes  with  our  ideal  conception  of  the  wary, 
long-considering,  though  adventurous  son  of  Laertes,  yet 
Simon  Lord  Lovat  is  doubtless  nearer  the  original  type.  In 
"  Hamlet,"  though  there  is  no  Denmark  of  the  ninth  century, 
Shakespeare  has  suggested  the  prevailing  rudeness  of  man- 
ners quite  enough  for  his  purpose.  We  see  it  in  the  single 
combat  of  Hamlet's  father  with  the  elder  Fortinbras ;  in  the 
vulgar  wassail  of  the  King ;  in  the  English  monarch  being 
expected  to  hang  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern  out  of  hand 
merely  to  oblige  his  cousin  of  Denmark ;  in  Laertes,  sent  to 
Paris  to  be  made  a  gentleman  of,  becoming  instantly  capable 
of  any  the  most  barbarous  treachery  to  glut  his  vengeance. 
We  can  not  fancy  Ragnar  Lodbrog  or  Eric  the  Red  matricu- 
lating at  Wittenberg,  but  it  was  essential  that  Hamlet  should 
be  a  scholar,  and  Shakespeare  sends  him  thither  without  more 
ado.  All  through  the  play  we  get  the  notion  of  a  state  of 
society  in  which  a  savage  nature  has  disguised  itself  in  the 
externals  of  civilization,  like  a  Maori  deacon,  who  has  only 
to  strip  and  he  becomes  once  more  a  tattooed  pagan  with 
his  mouth  watering  for  a  spare-rib  of  his  pastor.  Histori- 
cally, at  the  date  of  "  Hamlet,"  the  Danes  were  in  the  habit  of 
burning  their  enemies  alive  in  their  houses,  with  as  much  of 
their  family  about  them  as  might  be  to  make  it  comfortable. 
Shakespeare  seems  purposely  to  have  dissociated  his  play 
from  history  by  changing  nearly  every  name  in  the  original 
legend.  The  motive  of  the  play — revenge  as  a  religious 
duty — belongs  only  to  a  social  state  in  which  the  traditions 
of  barbarism  are  still  operative,  but,  with  infallible  artistic 
judgment,  Shakespeare  has  chosen,  not  untamed  nature,  as 
he  found  it  in  history,  but  the  period  of  transition,  a  period 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


415 


of  which  the  times  are  always  out  of  joint,  and  thus  the  ir- 
resolution which  has  its  root  in  Hamlet's  own  character  is 
stimulated  by  the  very  incompatibility  of  that  legacy  of 
vengeance  he  has  inherited  from  the  past  with  the  new  cul- 
ture and  refinement  of  which  he  is  the  representative.  One 
of  the  few  books  which  Shakespeare  is  known  to  have  pos- 
sessed was  Florio's  Montaigne,  and  he  might  well  have 
transferred  the  Frenchman's  motto,  "  Que  syais-je?  "  to  the 
front  of  his  tragedy;  nor  can  I  help  fancying  something 
more  than  accident  in  the  fact  that  Hamlet  has  been  a  stu- 
dent at  Wittenberg,  whence  those  new  ideas  went  forth,  of 
whose  results  in  unsettling  men's  faith,  and  consequently 
disqualifying  them  for  promptness  in  action,  Shakespeare 
had  been  not  only  an  eye-witness,  but  which  he  must  actu- 
ally have  experienced  in  himself. 

One  other  objection  let  me  touch  upon  here,  especially 
as  it  has  been  urged  against  "  Hamlet,"  and  that  is  the  intro- 
duction of  low  characters  and  comic  scenes  in  tragedy. 
Even  Garrick,  who  had  just  assisted  at  the  Stratford  Jubi- 
lee, where  Shakespeare  had  been  pronounced  divine,  was 
induced  by  this  absurd  outcry  for  the  proprieties  of  the 
tragic  stage  to  omit  the  grave-diggers'  scene  from  "Hamlet." 
Leaving  apart  the  fact  that  Shakespeare  would  not  have 
been  the  representative  poet  he  is  if  he  had  not  given  ex- 
pression to  this  striking  tendency  of  the  northern  races, 
which  shows  itself  constantly,  not  only  in  their  literature, 
but  even  in  their  mythology  and  their  architecture,  the 
grave-diggers'  scene  always  impresses  me  as  one  of  the  most 
pathetic  in  the  whole  tragedy.  That  Shakespeare  intro- 
duced such  scenes  and  characters  with  deliberate  intention, 
and  with  a  view  to  artistic  relief  and  contrast,  there  can 


416  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

hardly  be  a  doubt.  We  must  take  it  for  granted  that  a  man 
whose  works  show  everywhere  the  results  of  judgment  some- 
times acted  with  forethought.  I  find  the  springs  of  the  pro- 
foundest  sorrow  and  pity  in  this  hardened  indifference  of 
the  grave-diggers,  in  their  careless  discussion  as  to  whether 
Ophelia's  death  was  by  suicide  or  no,  in  their  singing  and 
jesting  at  their  dreary  work. 

"  A  pickaxe  and  a  spade,  a  spade, 
For — and  a  shrouding-sheet : 
O,  a  pit  of  clay  for  to  be  made 
For  such  a  guest  is  meet ! " 

We  know  who  is  to  be  the  guest  of  this  earthen  hospitality 
— how  much  beauty,  love,  and  heart-break  are  to  be  covered 
in  that  pit  of  clay.  All  we  remember  of  Ophelia  reacts 
upon  us  with  tenfold  force,  and  we  recoil  from  our  amuse- 
ment at  the  ghastly  drollery  of  the  two  delvers  with  a  shock 
of  horror.  That  the  unconscious  Hamlet  should  stumble  on 
this  grave  of  all  others,  that  it  should  be  here  that  he  should 
pause  to  muse  humorously  on  death  and  decay — all  this 
prepares  us  for  the  revulsion  of  passion  in  the  next  scene, 
and  for  the  frantic  confession : 

"  I  loved  Ophelia  ;  forty  thousand  brothers 
Could  not  with  all  their  quantity  of  love 
Make  up  my  sum  !  " 

And  it  is  only  here  that  such  an  asseveration  would  be  true 
even  to  the  feeling  of  the  moment ;  for  it  is  plain  from  all  we 
know  of  Hamlet  that  he  could  not  have  so  loved  Ophelia ; 
that  he  was  incapable  of  the  self-abandonment  of  a  true 
passion;  that  he  would  have  analyzed  this  emotion  as  he 
does  all  others ;  would  have  peeped  and  botanized  upon  it 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  417 

till  it  became  to  him  a  mere  matter  of  scientific  interest. 
All  this  force  of  contrast,  and  this  horror  of  surprise,  were 
necessary  so  to  intensify  his  remorseful  regret  that  he  should 
believe  himself  for  once  in  earnest.  The  speech  of  the 
King,  "  O,  he  is  mad,  Laertes,"  recalls  him  to  himself,  and 
he  at  once  begins  to  rave  : 

"  Zounds  !  show  me  what  thou'lt  do  ! 

Woul't  weep  ?  woul't  fight  ?  woul't  fast  ?  woul't  tear  thyself  ? 
Woul't  drink  up  Eysil  ?  eat  a  crocodile  ?  " 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  whole  plot  hinges  upon  the 
character  of  Hamlet,  that  Shakespeare's  conception  of  this 
was  the  ovum  out  of  which  the  whole  organism  was  hatched. 
And  here  let  me  remark  that  there  is  a  kind  of  genealogical 
necessity  in  the  character — a  thing  not  altogether  strange  to 
the  attentive  reader  of  Shakespeare.  Hamlet  seems  the 
natural  result  of  the  mixture  of  father  and  mother  in  his 
temperament,  the  resolution  and  persistence  of  the  one,  like 
sound  timber  wormholed  and  made  shaky,  as  it  were,  by  the 
other's  infirmity  of  will  and  discontinuity  of  purpose.  In 
natures  so  imperfectly  mixed  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find 
vehemence  of  intention  the  prelude  and  counterpoise  of 
weak  performance,  the  conscious  nature  striving  to  keep  up 
its  self-respect  by  a  triumph  in  words  all  the  more  resolute 
that  it  feels  assured  beforehand  of  inevitable  defeat  in  ac- 
tion. As  in  such  slipshod  housekeeping  men  are  their  own 
largest  creditors,  they  find  it  easy  to  stave  off  utter  bank- 
ruptcy of  conscience  by  taking  up  one  unpaid  promise  with 
another  larger,  and  at  heavier  interest,  till  such  self-swin- 
dling becomes  habitual  and  by  degrees  almost  painless. 
How  did  Coleridge  discount  his  own  notes  of  this  kind  with 
27 


4i8  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

less  and  less  specie  as  the  figures  lengthened  on  the  paper  ! 
As  with  Hamlet,  so  it  is  with  Ophelia  and  Laertes.  The 
father's  feebleness  comes  up  again  in  the  wasting  heart-break 
and  gentle  lunacy  of  the  daughter,  while  the  son  shows  it  in 
a  rashness  of  impulse  and  act,  a  kind  of  crankiness,  of  whose 
essential  feebleness  we  are  all  the  more  sensible  as  con- 
trasted with  a  nature  so  steady  on  its  keel,  and  drawing  so 
much  water,  as  that  of  Horatio — the  foil  at  once,  in  different 
ways,  to  both  him  and  Hamlet.  It  was  natural,  also,  that 
the  daughter  of  self-conceited  old  Polonius  should  have  her 
softness  stiffened  with  a  fiber  of  obstinacy ;  for  there  are 
two  kinds  of  weakness,  that  which  breaks,  and  that  which 
bends.  Ophelia's  is  of  the  former  kind  ;  Hero  is  her  coun- 
terpart, giving  way  before  calamity,  and  rising  again  so  soon 
as  the  pressure  is  removed. 

I  find  two  passages  in  Dante  that  contain  the  exactest 
possible  definition  of  that  habit  or  quality  of  Hamlet's  mind 
which  justifies  the  tragic  turn  of  the  play,  and  renders  it 
natural  and  unavoidable  from  the  beginning.  The  first  is 
from  the  second  canto  of  the  "  Inferno  "  : 

"  E  quale  £  quei  che  disvuol  ci6  che  v.olle, 

E  per  nuovi  pensier  cangia  proposta, 

Si  che  del  cominciar  tutto  si  tolle  ; 

Tal  mi  fee'  io  in  quella  oscura  costa  : 

Perch£  pensando  consumai  la  impresa 

Che  fu  nel  cominciar  cotanto  tosta." 
"  And,  like  the  man  who  unwills  what  he  willed, 

And  for  new  thoughts  doth  change  his  first  intent, 

So  that  he  can  not  anywhere  begin, 

Such  became  I  upon  that  slope  obscure, 

Because  with  thinking  I  consumed  resolve, 

That  was  so  ready  at  the  setting  out." 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  419 

Again,  in  the  fifth  of  the  "  Purgatorio  "  : 

"  Che  sempre  1'  uomo  in  cui  pensier  rampoglia 
Sovra  pensier,  da  se  dilunga  il  segno, 
Perche  la  foga  1'  im  dell'  altro  insolla." 

"  For  always  he  in  whom  one  thought  buds  forth 
Out  of  another  farther  puts  the  goal, 
For  each  has  only  force  to  mar  the  other." 

Dante  was  a  profound  metaphysician,  and  as  in  the  first 
passage  he  describes  and  defines  a  certain  quality  of  mind, 
so  in  the  other  he  tells  us  its  result  in  the  character  and  life, 
namely,  indecision  and  failure — the  goal  farther  off  at  the 
end  than  at  the  beginning.  It  is  remarkable  how  close  a  re- 
semblance of  thought,  and  even  of  expression,  there  is  be- 
tween the  former  of  these  quotations  and  a  part  of  Hamlet's 
famous  soliloquy : 

"  Thus  conscience  [i.  e.,  consciousness]  doth  make  cowards  of  us  all : 
And  thus  the  native  hue  of  resolution 
Is  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought, 
And  enterprises  of  great  pitch  and  moment 
With  this  regard  their  currents  turn  awry, 
And  lose  the  name  of  action  !  " 

It  is  an  inherent  peculiarity  of  a  mind  like  Hamlet's  that 
it  should  be  conscious  of  its  own  defect.  Men  of  his  type 
are  for  ever  analyzing  their  own  emotions  and  motives.  They 
can  not  do  anything,  because  they  always  see  two  ways  of 
doing  it.  They  can  not  determine  on  any  course  of  action, 
because  they  are  always,  as  it  were,  standing  at  the  cross- 
roads, and  see  too  well  the  disadvantages  of  every  one  of 
them.  It  is  not  that  they  are  incapable  of  resolve,  but  some- 
how the  band  between  the  motive  power  and  the  operative 


42o  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

faculties  is  relaxed  and  loose.  The  engine  works,  but  the 
machinery  it  should  drive  stands  still.  The  imagination  is 
so  much  in  overplus,  that  thinking  a  thing  becomes  better 
than  doing  it,  and  thought  with  its  easy  perfection,  capable 
of  everything  because  it  can  accomplish  everything  with 
ideal  means,  is  vastly  more  attractive  and  satisfactory  than 
deed,  which  must  be  wrought  at  best  with  imperfect  instru- 
ments, and  always  falls  short  of  the  conception  that  went 
before  it.  "  If  to  do,"  says  Portia  in  "  The  Merchant  of 
Venice — "  if  to  do  were  as  easy  as  to  know  what  't  were  good 
to  do,  chapels  had  been  churches,  and  poor  men's  cottages 
princes'  palaces."  Hamlet  knows  only  too  well  what  'twere 
good  to  do,  but  he  palters  with  everything  in  a  double 
sense  :  he  sees  the  grain  of  good  there  is  in  evil,  and  the 
grain  of  evil  there  is  in  good,  as  they  exist  in  the  world,  and, 
finding  that  he  can  make  those  feather-weighted  accidents 
balance  each  other,  infers  that  there  is  little  to  choose  be- 
tween the  essences  themselves.  He  is  of  Montaigne's  mind, 
and  says  expressly  that  "  there  is  nothing  good  or  ill,  but 
thinking  makes  it  so."  He  dwells  so  exclusively  in  the 
world  of  ideas  that  the  world  of  facts  seems  trifling ;  nothing 
is  worth  the  while ;  and  he  has  been  so  long  objectless  and 
purposeless,  so  far  as  actual  life  is  concerned,  that,  when  at 
last  an  object  and  an  aim  are  forced  upon  him,  he  can  not 
deal  with  them,  and  gropes  about  vainly  for  a  motive  out- 
side of  himself  that  shall  marshal  his  thoughts  for  him  and 
guide  his  faculties  into  the  path  of  action.  He  is  the  victim 
not  so  much  of  feebleness  of  will  as  of  an  intellectual  indif- 
ference that  hinders  the  will  from  working  long  in  any  one 
direction.  He  wishes  to  will,  but  never  wills.  His  con- 
tinual iteration  of  resolve  shows  that  he  has  no  resolution. 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


421 


He  is  capable  of  passionate  energy  where  the  occasion  pre- 
sents itself  suddenly  from  without,  because  nothing  is  so 
irritable  as  conscious  irresolution  with  a  duty  to  perform. 
But  of  deliberate  energy  he  is  not  capable  ;  for  there  the 
impulse  must  come  from  within,  and  the  blade  of  his  analy- 
sis is  so  subtile  that  it  can  divide  the  finest  hair  of  motive 
'twixt  north  and  northwest  side,  leaving  him  desperate  to 
choose  between  them.  The  very  consciousness  of  his  de- 
fect is  an  insuperable  bar  to  his  repairing  it ;  for  the  unity 
of  purpose,  which  infuses  every  fiber  of  the  character  with 
will  available  whenever  wanted,  is  impossible  where  the 
mind  can  never  rest  till  it  has  resolved  that  unity  into  its 
component  elements,  and  satisfied  itself  which  on  the  whole 
is  of  greater  value.  A  critical  instinct  so  insatiable  that  it 
must  turn  upon  itself,  for  lack  of  something  else  to  hew  and 
hack,  becomes  incapable  at  last  of  originating  anything 
except  indecision.  It  becomes  infallible  in  what  not  to  do. 
How  easily  he  might  have  accomplished  his  task  is  shown 
by  the  conduct  of  Laertes.  When  he  has  a  death  to  avenge 
he  raises  a  mob,  breaks  into  the  palace,  bullies  the  King, 
and  proves  how  weak  the  usurper  really  was. 

The  world  is  the  victim  of  splendid  parts,  and  is  slow  to 
accept  a  rounded  whole,  because  that  is  something  which  is 
long  in  completing,  still  longer  in  demonstrating  its  com- 
pletion. We  like  to  be  surprised  into  admiration,  and  not 
logically  convinced  that  we  ought  to  admire.  We  are  wil- 
ling to  be  delighted  with  success,  though  we  are  somewhat 
indifferent  to  the  homely  qualities  which  insure  it.  Our 
thought  is  so  filled  with  the  rocket's  burst  of  momentary 
splendor  so  far  above  us,  that  we  forget  the  poor  stick,  use- 
ful and  unseen,  that  made  its  climbing  possible.  One  of 


422  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

these  homely  qualities  is  continuity  of  character,  and  it 
escapes  present  applause  because  it  tells  chiefly,  in  the  long 
run,  in  results.  With  his  usual  tact,  Shakespeare  has  brought 
in  such  a  character  as  a  contrast  and  foil  to  Hamlet.  Ho- 
ratio is  the  only  complete  man  in  the  play — solid,  well-knit, 
and  true  ;  a  noble,  quiet  nature,  with  that  highest  of  all 
qualities,  judgment ;  always  sane  and  prompt,  who  never 
drags  his  anchors  for  any  wind  of  opinion  or  fortune,  but 
grips  all  the  closer  to  the  reality  of  things.  He  seems  one 
of  those  calm,  undemonstrative  men  whom  we  love  and  ad- 
mire without  asking  to  know  why,  crediting  them  with  the 
capacity  of  great  things,  without  any  test  of  actual  achieve- 
ment, because  we  feel  that  their  manhood  is  a  constant 
quality,  and  no  mere  accident  of  circumstance  and  oppor- 
tunity. Such  men  are  always  sure  of  the  presence  of  their 
highest  self  on  demand.  Hamlet  is  continually  drawing 
bills  on  the  future,  secured  by  his  promise  of  himself  to  him- 
self, which  he  can  never  redeem.  His  own  somewhat  femi- 
nine nature  recognizes  its  complement  in  Horatio,  and  clings 
to  it  instinctively,  as  naturally  as  Horatio  is  attracted  by 
that  fatal  gift  of  imagination,  the  absence  of  which  makes 
the  strength  of  his  own  character,  as  its  overplus  does  the 
weakness  of  Hamlet's.  It  is  a  happy  marriage  of  two  minds 
drawn  together  by  the  charm  of  unlikeness.  Hamlet  feels 
in  Horatio  the  solid  steadiness  which  he  misses  in  himself; 
Horatio  in  Hamlet  that  need  of  service  and  sustainment  to 
render  which  gives  him  a  consciousness  of  his  own  value. 
Hamlet  fills  the  place  of  a  woman  to  Horatio,  revealing  him 
to  himself  not  only  in  what  he  says,  but  by  a  constant  claim 
upon  his  strength  of  nature  ;  and  there  is  great  psychological 
truth  in  making  suicide  the  first  impulse  of  this  quiet,  un- 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


423 


demonstrative  man,  after  Hamlet's  death,  as  if  the  very 
reason  for  his  being  were  taken  away  with  his  friend's  need 
of  him.  In  his  grief,  he  for  the  first  and  only  time  speaks 
of  himself,  is  first  made  conscious  of  himself  by  his  loss.  If 
this  manly  reserve  of  Horatio  be  true  to  nature,  not  less  so 
are  the  communicativeness  of  Hamlet,  and  his  tendency  to 
soliloquize.  If  self-consciousness  be  alien  to  the  one,  it  is 
just  as  truly  the  happiness  of  the  other.  Like  a  musician 
distrustful  of  himself,  he  is  for  ever  tuning  his  instrument, 
first  overstraining  this  cord  a  little,  and  then  that,  but  un- 
able to  bring  them  into  unison,  or  to  profit  by  it  if  he  could. 
We  do  not  believe  that  Horatio  ever  thought  he  "  was 
not  a  pipe  for  Fortune's  finger  to  play  what  stop  she  please," 
till  Hamlet  told  him  so.  That  was  Fortune's  affair,  not  his ; 
let  her  try  it,  if  she  liked.  He  is  unconscious  of  his  own 
peculiar  qualities,  as  men  of  decision  commonly  are,  or  they 
would  not  be  men  of  decision.  When  there  is  a  thing  to  be 
done,  they  go  straight  at  it,  and  for  the  time  there  is  nothing 
else  for  them  in  the  whole  universe  but  themselves  and  their 
object.  Hamlet,  on  the  other  hand,  is  always  studying  him- 
self. This  world  and  the  other,  top,  are  always  present  to 
his  mind,  and  there  in  the  corner  is  the  little  black  kobold 
of  a  doubt  making  mouths  at  him.  He  breaks  down  the 
bridges  before  him,  not  behind  him,  as  a  man  of  action 
would  do ;  but  there  is  something  more  than  this.  He  is  an 
ingrained  skeptic ;  though  his  is  the  skepticism,  not  of  rea- 
son, but  of  feeling,  whose  root  is  want  of  faith  in  himself. 
In  him  it  is  passive,  a  malady  rather  than  a  function  of  the^ 
mind.  We  might  call  him  insincere  :  not  that  he  was  in  any 
sense  a  hypocrite,  but  only  that  he  never  was  and  never 
could  be  in  earnest — never  could  be,  because  no  man  with- 


424  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

out  intense  faith  in  something  ever  can.  Even  if  he  only 
believed  in  himself,  that  were  better  than  nothing;  for  it 
will  carry  a  man  a  great  way  in  the  outward  successes  of 
life,  nay,  will  even  sometimes  give  him  the  Archimedean  ful- 
crum for  moving  the  world.  But  Hamlet  doubts  everything. 
He  doubts  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  just  after  seeing  his 
father's  spirit,  and  hearing  from  his  mouth  the  secrets  of  the 
other  world.  He  doubts  Horatio  even,  and  swears  him  to 
secrecy  on  the  cross  of  his  sword,  though  probably  he  him- 
self has  no  assured  belief  in  the  sacredness  of  the  symbol. 
He  doubts  Ophelia,  and  asks  her,  "Are  you  honest?  "  He 
doubts  the  ghost,  after  he  has  had  a  little  time  to  think 
about  it,  and  so  gets  up  the  play  to  test  the  guilt  of  the  King. 
And  how  coherent  the  whole  character  is !  With  what  per- 
fect tact  and  judgment  Shakespeare,  in  the  advice  to  the 
players,  makes  him  an  exquisite  critic  !  For  just  here  that 
part  of  his  character  which  would  be  weak  in  dealing  with 
affairs  is  strong.  A  wise  skepticism  is  the  first  attribute  of 
a  good  critic.  He  must  not  believe  that  the  fire-insurance 
offices  will  raise  their  rates  of  premium  on  Charles  River,  be- 
cause the  new  volume  of  poems  is  printing  at  Riverside  or 
the  University  Press.  He  must  not  believe  so  profoundly  in 
the  ancients  as  to  think  it  wholly  out  of  the  question  that 
the  world  has  still  vigor  enough  in  its  loins  to  beget  some 
one  who  will  one  of  these  days  be  as  good  an  ancient  as  any 
of  them. 

Another  striking  quality  in  Hamlet's  nature  is  his  per- 
petual inclination  to  irony.  I  think  this  has  been  generally 
passed  over  too  lightly,  as  if  it  were  something  external  and 
accidental,  rather  assumed  as  a  mask  than  part  of  the  real 
nature  of  the  man.  It  seems  to  me  to  go  deeper,  to  be 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  425 

something  innate,  and  not  merely  factitious.  It  is  nothing 
like  the  grave  irony  of  Socrates,  which  was  the  weapon  of  a 
man  thoroughly  in  earnest — the  boomerang  of  argument, 
which  one  throws  in  the  opposite  direction  of  what  he 
means  to  hit,  and  which  seems  to  be  flying  away  from  the 
adversary,  who  will  presently  find  himself  knocked  down  by 
it.  It  is  not  like  the  irony  of  Timon,  which  is  but  the  will- 
ful refraction  of  a  clear  mind  twisting  awry  whatever  enters 
it — or  of  lago,  which  is  the  slime  that  a  nature  essentially 
evil  loves  to  trail  over  all  beauty  and  goodness  to  taint  them 
with  distrust :  it  is  the  half-jest,  half-earnest  of  an  inactive 
temperament  that  has  not  quite  made  up  its  mind  whether 
life  is  a  reality  or  no,  whether  men  were  not  made  in  jest, 
and  which  amuses  itself  equally  with  finding  a  deep  mean- 
ing in  trivial  things  and  a  trifling  one  in  the  profoundest 
mysteries  of  being,  because  the  want  of  earnestness  in  its 
own  essence  infects  everything  else  with  its  own  indiffer- 
ence. If  there  be  now  and  then  an  unmannerly  rudeness 
and  bitterness  in  it,  as  in  the  scenes  with  Polonius  and  Os- 
rick,  we  must  remember  that  Hamlet  was  just  in  the  condi- 
tion which  spurs  men  to  sallies  of  this  kind ;  dissatisfied,  at 
one  neither  with  the  world  nor  with  himself,  and  accord- 
ingly casting  about  for  something  out  of  himself  to  vent  his 
spleen  upon.  But  even  in  these  passages  there  is  no  hint 
of  earnestness,  of  any  purpose  beyond  the  moment;  they 
are  mere  cat's-paws  of  vexation,  and  not  the  deep-raking 
ground-swell  of  passion,  as  we  see  it  in  the  sarcasm  of 
Lear. 

The  question  of  Hamlet's  madness  has  been  much  dis- 
cussed and  variously  decided.  High  medical  authority  has 
pronounced,  as  usual,  on  both  sides  of  the  question.  But 


426  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

the  induction  has  been  drawn  from  too  narrow  premises, 
being  based  on  a  mere  diagnosis  of  the  case,  and  not  on 
an  appreciation  of  the  character  in  its  completeness.  We 
have  a  case  of  pretended  madness  in  the  Edgar  of  "  King 
Lear  " ;  and  it  is  certainly  true  that  that  is  a  charcoal  sketch, 
coarsely  outlined,  compared  with  the  delicate  drawing,  the 
lights,  shades,  and  half-tints  of  the  portraiture  in  Hamlet. 
But  does  this  tend  to  prove  that  the  madness  of  the  latter, 
because  truer  to  the  recorded  observation  of  experts,  is  real, 
and  meant  to  be  real,  as  the  other  to  be  fictitious  ?  Not  in 
the  least,  as  it  appears  to  me.  Hamlet,  among  all  the  char- 
acters of  Shakespeare,  is  the  most  eminently  a  metaphysi- 
cian and  psychologist.  He  is  a  close  observer,  continually 
analyzing  his  own  nature  and  that  of  others,  letting  fall  his 
little  drops  of  acid  irony  on  all  who  come  near  him,  to 
make  them  show  what  they  are  made  of.  Even  Ophelia  is 
not  too  sacred,  Osrick  not  too  contemptible  for  experiment. 
If  such  a  man  assumed  madness,  he  would  play  his  part 
perfectly.  If  Shakespeare  himself,  without  going  mad,  could 
so  observe  and  remember  all  the  abnormal  symptoms  as  to 
be  able  to  reproduce  them  in  Hamlet,  why  should  it  be  be- 
yond the  power  of  Hamlet  to  reproduce  them  in  himself? 
If  you  deprive  Hamlet  of  reason,  there  is  no  truly  tragic 
motive  left.  He  would  be  a  fit  subject  for  Bedlam,  but  not 
for  the  stage.  We  might  have  pathology  enough,  but  no 
pathos.  Ajax  first  becomes  tragic  when  he  recovers  his 
wits.  If  Hamlet  is  irresponsible,  the  whole  play  is  a  chaos. 
That  he  is  not  so  might  be  proved  by  evidence  enough,  were 
it  not  labor  thrown  away. 

This  feigned  madness  of  Hamlet's  is  one  of  the  few 
points  in  which  Shakespeare  has  kept  close  to  the  old  story 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  427 

on  which  he  founded  his  play ;  and,  as  he  never  decided 
without  deliberation,  so  he  never  acted  without  unerring 
judgment.  Hamlet  drifts  through  the  whole  tragedy.  He 
never  keeps  on  one  tack  long  enough  to  get  steerage-way, 
even  if,  in  a  nature  like  his,  with  those  electric  streamers  of 
whim  and  fancy  for  ever  wavering  across  the  vault  of  his 
brain,  the  needle  of  judgment  would  point  in  one  direction 
long  enough  to  strike  a  course  by.  The  scheme  of  simu- 
lated insanity  is  precisely  the  one  he  would  have  been  likely 
to  hit  upon,  because  it  enabled  him  to  follow  his  own  bent, 
and  to  drift  with  an  apparent  purpose,  postponing  decisive 
action  by  the  very  means  he  adopts  to  arrive  at  its  accom- 
plishment, and  satisfying  himself  with  the  show  of  doing  some- 
thing, that  he  may  escape  so  much  the  longer  the  dreaded 
necessity  of  really  doing  anything  at  all.  It  enables  him  to 
play  with  life  and  duty,  instead  of  taking  them  by  the 
rougher  side,  where  alone  any  firm  grip  is  possible — to  feel 
that  he  is  on  the  way  toward  accomplishing  somewhat,  when 
he  is  really  paltering  with  his  own  irresolution.  Nothing,  I 
think,  could  be  more  finely  imagined  than  this.  Voltaire 
complains  that  he  goes  mad  without  any  sufficient  object  or 
result.  Perfectly  true,  and  precisely  what  was  most  natural 
for  him  to  do,  and,  accordingly,  precisely  what  Shakespeare 
meant  that  he  should  do.  It  was  delightful  to  him  to  in- 
dulge his  imagination  and  humor,  to  prove  his  capacity  for 
something  by  playing  a  part ;  the  one  thing  he  could  not  do 
was  to  bring  himself  to  act,  unless  when  surprised  by  a  sud- 
den impulse  of  suspicion,  as  where  he  kills  Polonius,  and 
there  he  could  not  see  his  victim.  He  discourses  admirably 
of  suicide,  but  does  not  kill  himself;  he  talks,  daggers,  but 
uses  none.  He  puts  by  the  chance  to  kill  the  King  with  the 


428  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

excuse  that  he  will  not  do  it  while  he  is  praying,  lest  his  soul 
be  saved  thereby,  though  it  is  more  than  doubtful  whether 
he  believed  it  himself.  He  allows  himself  to  be  packed  off 
to  England,  without  any  motive  except  that  it  would  for  the 
time  take  him  farther  from  a  present  duty :  the  more  dis- 
agreeable to  a  nature  like  his  because  it  was  present,  and 
not  a  mere  matter  for  speculative  consideration.  When 
Goethe  made  his  famous  comparison  of  the  acorn  planted  in 
a  vase  which  it  bursts  with  its  growth,  and  says  that  in  like 
manner  Hamlet  is  a  nature  which  breaks  down  under  the 
weight  of  a  duty  too  great  for  it  to  bear,  he  seems  to  have 
considered  the  character  too  much  from  one  side.  Had 
Hamlet  actually  killed  himself  to  escape  his  too  onerous 
commission,  Goethe's  conception  of  him  would  have  been 
satisfactory  enough.  But  Hamlet  was  hardly  a  sentimental- 
ist, like  Werther ;  on  the  contrary,  he  saw  things  only  too 
clearly  in  the  dry  north-light  of  the  intellect.  It  is  chance 
that  at  last  brings  him  to  his  end.  It  would  appear  rather 
that  Shakespeare  intended  to  show  us  an  imaginative  tem- 
perament brought  face  to  face  with  actualities,  into  any  clear 
relation  of  sympathy  with  which  it  can  not  bring  itself.  The 
very  means  that  Shakespeare  makes  use  of  to  lay  upon  him 
the  obligation  of  acting — the  ghost — really  seems  to  make  it 
all  the  harder  for  him  to  act ;  for  the  specter  but  gives  an 
additional  excitement  to  his  imagination  and  a  fresh  topic 
for  his  skepticism. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  evolve  any  high  moral  significance 
from  the  play,  even  if  I  thought  it  possible ;  for  that  would 
be  aside  from  the  present  purpose.  The  scope  of  the  higher 
drama  is  to  represent  life ;  not  every-day  life,  it  is  true,  but 
life  lifted  above  the  plane  of  bread-and-butter  associations, 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  429 

by  nobler  reaches  of  language,  by  the  influence  at  once  in- 
spiring and  modulating  of  verse,  by  an  intenser  play  of  pas- 
sion condensing  that  misty  mixture  of  feeling  and  reflection 
which  makes  the  ordinary  atmosphere  of  existence  into 
flashes  of  thought  and  phrase  whose  brief  but  terrible  illumi- 
nation prints  the  outworn  landscape  of  every  day  upon  our 
brains,  with  its  little  motives  and  mean  results,  in  lines  of 
telltale  fire.  The  moral  office  of  tragedy  is  to  show  us  our 
own  weaknesses  idealized  in  grander  figures  and  more  awful 
results — to  teach  us  that  what  we  pardon  in  ourselves  as 
venial  faults,  if  they  seem  to  have  but  slight  influence  on 
our  immediate  fortunes,  have  arms  as  long  as  those  of  kings, 
and  reach  forward  to  the  catastrophe  of  our  lives ;  that  they 
are  dry-rotting  the  very  fiber  of  will  and  conscience,  so  that, 
if  we  should  be  brought  to  the  test  of  a  great  temptation  or 
a  stringent  emergency,  we  must  be  involved  in  a  ruin  as 
sudden  and  complete  as  that  we  shudder  at  in  the  unreal 
scene  of  the  theatre.  But  the  primary  object  of  a  tragedy  is 
not  to  inculcate  a  formal  moral.  Representing  life,  it  teaches, 
like  life,  by  indirection,  by  those  nods  and  winks  that  are 
thrown  away  on  us  blind  horses  in  such  profusion.  We 
may  learn,  to  be  sure,  plenty  of  lessons  from  Shakespeare. 
We  are  not  likely  to  have  kingdoms  to  divide,  crowns  fore- 
told us  by  weird  sisters,  a  father's  death  to  avenge,  or  to  kill 
our  wives  from  jealousy;  but  Lear  may  teach  us  to  draw 
the  line  more  clearly  between  a  wise  generosity  and  a  loose- 
handed  weakness  of  giving ;  Macbeth,  how  one  sin  involves 
another,  and  for  ever  another,  by  a  fatal  parthenogenesis, 
and  that  the  key  which  unlocks  forbidden  doors  to  our  will 
or  passion  leaves  a  stain  on  the  hand,  that  may  not  be  so 
dark  as  blood,  but  that  will  not  out ;  Hamlet,  that  all  the 


430 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


noblest  gifts  of  person,  temperament,  and  mind  slip  like 
sand  through  the  grasp  of  an  infirm  purpose ;  Othello,  that 
the  perpetual  silt  of  some  one  weakness,  the  eddies  of  a  sus- 
picious temper  depositing  their  one  impalpable  layer  after 
another,  may  build  up  a  shoal  on  which  an  heroic  life  and 
an  otherwise  magnanimous  nature  may  bilge  and  go  to 
pieces.  All  this  we  may  learn,  and  much  more,  and  Shake- 
speare was  no  doubt  well  aware  of  all  this  and  more ;  but  I 
do  not  believe  that  he  wrote  his  plays  with  any  such  didac- 
tic purpose.  He  knew  human  nature  too  well  not  to  know 
that  one  thorn  of  experience  is  worth  a  whole  wilderness  of 
warning — that,  where  one  man  shapes  his  life  by  precept 
and  example,  there  are  a  thousand  who  have  it  shaped  for 
them  by  impulse  and  by  circumstances.  He  did  not  mean 
his  great  tragedies  for  scarecrows,  as  if  the  nailing  of  one 
hawk  to  the  barn-door  would  prevent  the  next  from  coming 
down  souse  into  the  hen-yard.  No,  it  is  not  the  poor 
bleaching  victim  hung  up  to  moult  its  draggled  feathers  in 
the  rain  that  he  wishes  to  show  us.  He  loves  the  hawk- 
nature  as  well  as  the  hen-nature ;  and,  if  he  is  unequaled  in 
anything,  it  is  in  that  sunny  breadth  of  view,  that  impregna- 
bility of  reason,  that  looks  down  all  ranks  and  conditions  of 
men,  all  fortune  and  misfortune,  with  the  equal  eye  of  the 
pure  artist. 

Whether  I  have  fancied  anything  into  Hamlet  which  the 
author  never  dreamed  of  putting  there  I  do  not  greatly  con- 
cern myself  to  inquire.  Poets  are  always  entitled  to  a  roy- 
alty on  whatever  we  find  in  their  works ;  for  these  fine  crea- 
tions as  truly  build  themselves  up  in  the  brain  as  they  are 
built  up  with  deliberate  forethought.  Praise  art  as  we  will, 
that  which  the  artist  did  not  mean  to  put  into  his  work,  but 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE.  43 ! 

which  found  itself  there  by  some  generous  process  of  nature 
of  which  he  was  as  unaware  as  the  blue  river  is  of  its  rhyme 
with  the  blue  sky,  has  somewhat  in  it  that  snatches  us  into 
sympathy  with  higher  things  than  those  which  come  by  plot 
and  observation.  Goethe  wrote  his  "  Faust  "  in  its  earliest 
form  without  a  thought  of  the  deeper  meaning  which  the 
exposition  of  an  age  of  criticism  was  to  find  in  it ;  without 
foremeaning  it,  he  had  impersonated  in  Mephistopheles  the 
genius  of  his  century.  Shall  this  subtract  from  the  debt  we 
owe  him  ?  Not  at  all.  If  originality  were  conscious  of 
itself,  it  would  have  lost  its  right  to  be  original.  I  believe 
that  Shakespeare  intended  to  impersonate  in  Hamlet  not  a 
mere  metaphysical  entity,  but  a  man  of  flesh  and  blood  :  yet 
it  is  certainly  curious  how  prophetically  typical  the  charac- 
ter is  of  that  introversion  of  mind  which  is  so  constant  a 
phenomenon  of  these  latter  days,  of  that  over-consciousness 
which  wastes  itself  in  analyzing  the  motives  of  action  instead 
of  acting. 

The  old  painters  had  a  rule,  that  all  compositions  should 
be  pyramidal  in  form — a  central  figure,  from  which  the 
others  slope  gradually  away  on  the  two  sides.  Shakespeare 
probably  had  never  heard  of  this  rule,  and,  if  he  had,  would 
not  have  been  likely  to  respect  it  more  than  he  has  the  so- 
called  classical  unities  of  time  and  place.  But  he  understood 
perfectly  the  artistic  advantages  of  gradation,  contrast,  and 
relief.  Taking  Hamlet  as  the  key-note,  we  find  in  him 
weakness  of  character  which,  on  the  one  hand,  is  contrasted 
with  the  feebleness  that  springs  from  overweening  conceit  in 
Polonius  and  with  frailty  of  temperament  in  Ophelia,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  brought  into  fuller  relief  by  the 
steady  force  of  Horatio  and  the  impulsive  violence  of  Laertes, 


432 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


who  is  resolute  from  thoughtlessness,  just  as  Hamlet  is  ir- 
resolute from  overplus  of  thought. 

If  we  must  draw  a  moral  from  Hamlet,  it  would  seem  to 
be  that  Will  is  Fate,  and  that,  Will  once  abdicating,  the  in- 
evitable successor  in  the  regency  is  Chance.  Had  Hamlet 
acted,  instead  of  musing  how  good  it  would  be  to  act,  the 
King  might  have  been  the  only  victim.  As  it  is,  all  the  main 
actors  in  the  story  are  the  fortuitous  sacrifice  of  his  irresolu- 
tion. We  see  how  a  single  great  vice  of  character  at  last 
draws  to  itself  as  allies  and  confederates  all  other  weaknesses 
of  the  man,  as  in  civil  wars  the  timid  and  the  selfish  wait  to 
throw  themselves  upon  the  stronger  side  : 

"  In  Life's  small  things  be  resolute  and  great 
To  keep  thy  muscles  trained  :  know'st  thou  when  Fate 
Thy  measure  takes  ?  or  when  she'll  say  to  thee, 
'  I  find  thee  worthy,  do  this  thing  for  me '  ?  " 


THE 

MECHANISM    OF    VITAL    ACTIONS.* 


THE  appearance  of  Professor  Draper's  ingenious  and 
original  treatise  on  "  Physiology  "  must  call  the  attention  of 
a  large  class  of  readers  to  those  higher  questions  of  the  sci- 
ence which  are  freely  discussed  in  its  pages.  The  scientific 
and  literary  character  of  the  work  has  been  made  the  sub- 
ject of  special  notice  in  various  other  quarters.  It  is  agreed 
that  Professor  Draper  has  given  us  a  book  that  is  full  of  in- 
terest, containing  many  striking  views  and  novel  experimen- 
tal illustrations.  Its  faults  spring  out  of  its  merits,  and  are 
such  as  belong  to  most  works  of  science  written  by  men  of 
lively  imagination.  We  make  our  sincere  acknowledgments 


*  Published  July,  1857. 

1.  Human  Physiology,  Statical  and   Dynamical  ;  or  the  Conditions 
and  Course  of  the  Life  of  Man.    By  John  William  Draper,  M.  D.,  LL.  D., 
Professor  of  Chemistry  and   Physiology  in  the  University  of  New  York. 
New  York  :  Harper  &  Brothers.     1856.     8vo.     Pp.  649. 

2.  The  Mutual  Relations  of  the  Vital  and  Physical  Forces.     By  Wil- 
liam B.  Carpenter,  M.   D.,   Examiner  in  Physiology  and  Comparative 
Anatomy  in  the  University  of  London.    From  the  "  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions," Part  II.,  for  1850.     Lpndon.     1850.     4to.     Pp.  37. 

3.  The  Correlation  of  Physical  Forces.     By  W.   R.   Grove,   M.  A., 
F.   R.  S.,    Barrister-at-Law.      Second  edition.      London.      1850.      8vo. 
Pp.  119. 

4.  Caloric ;  its  Mechanical,  Chemical,  and  Vital  Agencies  in  the  Phe- 
nomena of  Nature.    By  Samuel  L.  Metcalfe,  M.  D.,  of  Transylvania  Uni- 
versity.    London.     1843.     2  vols.     8vo.     Pp.  1,100. 

28 


434       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

to  the  author  for  the  fresh  contributions  he  has  furnished  to 
our  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  life,  and  the  new  impulse  he 
has  imparted  to  the  study  of  its  mysteries. 

We  have  prefixed  to  this  paper  the  titles  of  two  essays, 
published  within  the  last  few  years,  and  also  of  a  ponderous 
volume  which  saw  the  light  before  either  of  them,  and  has 
been,  or  seems  to  have  been,  less  read  than  either.  Mr. 
Grove's  essay  has  excited  great  attention  in  England,  and 
received  the  honors  of  translation  into  the  French  language. 
Dr.  Carpenter's  paper,  published  in  the  "  Philosophical 
Transactions,"  extended  the  generalizations  of  Mr.  Grove 
into  the  domain  of  Physiology.  Both  are  brief,  and  are 
therefore  read.  Dr.  Metcalfe  forgot  the  motto  which  he  must 
have  often  seen  quoted  from  D'Alembert :  "  The  author 
kills  himself  in  spinning  out  what  the  reader  kills  himself  in 
cutting  short."  Consequently  his  book  has  been  shelved, 
in  spite  of  its  originality  and  learning.  But  we  must  do  our 
countryman  the  justice  to  say  that,  if  there  is  anything  in 
the  physical  theory  of  vital  actions  which  has  found  advo- 
cates in  Mr.  Newport  and  Dr.  Carpenter,  and  which  Pro- 
fessor Draper  has  so  forcibly  illustrated,  Dr.  Metcalfe  has  an- 
ticipated them  all  in  maintaining  that  caloric  "  is  alone,  of 
every  form  of  being,  quick  or  dead,  the  active  principle  " ; 
the  same  doctrine,  modernized,  which,  in  another  form,  was 
taught  by  Hippocrates.  And  we  must  be  permitted  to  ex- 
press our  astonishment  that  a  work  of  such  pretensions,  pub- 
lished in  London,  should  be  ignored  by  any  English  writer 
of  authority,  while  he  is  repeating  and  developing  its  leading 
ideas,  long  since  given  to  the  world. 

We  do  not  propose  to  make  a  critical  examination  of  any 
of  these  publications.  We  only  avail  ourselves  of  them  for 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      435 

the  purpose  of  opening  one  of  the  questions  which  all  of  them 
suggest  or  discuss.  This  is  the  relation  existing  between  the 
physical  agencies  of  general  nature  and  the  peculiar  mani- 
festations of  living  beings.  The  interest  of  physiologists 
was  especially  called  to  this  subject  by  the  well-known  lec- 
tures of  Professor  Matteucci,  delivered  in  the  University  of 
Pisa,  by  appointment  of  the  Tuscan  Government,  in  1844. 
A  translation  of  these  lectures  was  introduced  to  the  Eng- 
lish public  under  the  auspices  of  Dr.  Pereira  and  Professor 
Faraday.  From  that  time,  the  questions  involved  in  the 
comparison  of  living  and  lifeless  nature  have  attracted  more 
and  more  attention,  until  they  have  become,  in  a  measure, 
blended  with  popular  studies.  We  propose  to  select  one 
subdivision  of  this  vast  subject  for  such  discussion  as  may 
not  be  unfitted  for  the  eye  of  the  unprofessional  student  of 
nature. 

If  the  reader  of  this  paper  live  another  complete  year,  his 
self-conscious  principle  will  have  migrated  from  its  present 
tenement  to  another,  the  raw  materials,  even,  of  which  are 
not  as  yet  put  together.  A  portion  of  that  body  of  his  which 
is  to  be  will  ripen  in  the  corn  of  the  next  harvest.  Another 
portion  of  his  future  person  he  will  purchase,  or  others  will 
purchase  for  him,  headed  up  in  the  form  of  certain  barrels 
of  potatoes.  A  third  fraction  is  yet  to  be  gathered  in  a 
Southern  rice-field.  The  limbs  with  which  he  is  then  to 
walk  will  be  clad  with  flesh  borrowed  from  the  tenants  of 
many  stalls  and  pastures,  now  unconscious  of  their  doom. 
The  very  organs  of  speech  with  which  he  is  to  talk  so  wisely, 
or  plead  so  eloquently,  or  preach  so  effectively,  must  first 
serve  his  humbler  brethren  to  bleat,  to  bellow,  and  for  all 
the  varied  utterances  of  bristled  or  feathered  barn-yard  life. 


436       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

His  bones  themselves  are,  to  a  great  extent,  in  posse,  and  not 
in  esse.  A  bag  of  phosphate  of  lime  which  he  has  ordered 
from  Professor  Mapes,  for  his  grounds,  contains  a  large  part 
of  what  is  to  be  his  next  year's  skeleton.  And,  more  than 
all  this,  as  by  far  the  greater  part  of  his  body  is  nothing, 
after  all,  but  water,  the  main  substance  of  his  scattered  mem- 
bers is  to  be  looked  for  in  the  reservoir,  in  the  running 
streams,  at  the  bottom  of  the  well,  in  the  clouds  that  float 
over  his  head,  or  diffused  among  them  all. 

For  a  certain  period,  then,  the  permanent  human  being 
is  to  use  the  temporary  fabric  made  up  of  these  shifting  ma- 
terials. So  long  as  they  are  held  together  in  human  shape, 
they  manifest  certain  properties  which  fit  them  for  the  use 
of  a  self-conscious  and  self-determining  existence.  But  it 
is  as  absurd  to  suppose  any  identification  of  this  existence 
with  the  materials  which  it  puts  on  and  off,  as  to  suppose 
the  hand  identified  with  the  glove  it  wears,  or  the  sponge 
with  the  various  fluids  which  may  in  succession  fill  its  pores. 
Our  individual  being  is  in  no  sense  approximated  to  a  potato 
by  living  on  that  esculent  for  a  few  months  ;  and  if  we  study 
the  potato  while  it  forms  a  part  of  our  bodies  under  the  name 
of  brain  or  muscle,  we  shall  learn  no  more  of  the  true  na- 
ture of  our  self-determining  consciousness  than  if  we  studied 
the  same  tuber  in  the  hill  where  it  grew. 

These  forms  of  nutritive  matter  that  pass  through  our 
systems  in  a  continual  round  may  be  observed,  weighed, 
tested,  analyzed,  tortured  in  a  thousand  ways,  without  our 
touching  for  a  moment  the  higher  problem  of  our  human 
existence.  Sooner  or  later,  according  to  the  perfection  of 
our  methods  and  instruments,  we  bring  hard  up  against  a 
deaf,  dumb,  blind  fact.  The  microscope  reaches  a  granule, 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      437 

and  there  it  stops.  Chemistry  finds  a  few  bodies  which  it 
can  not  decompose,  and  plays  with  them  as  with  so  many 
dominos,  counting  and  matching  equivalents  as  our  old 
friends  of  the  Cafe  Procope  used  to  count  and  match  the 
spots  on  their  humbler  playthings.  But  why  C4,  O2,  H6, 
have  such  a  tendency  to  come  together,  and  why,  when  they 
have  come  together,  a  fluid  ounce  of  the  resulting  compound 
will  make  the  small  philosopher  as  great  as  a  king  for  an 
hour  or  two,  and  give  him  the  usual  headache  which  crowns 
entail  upon  their  wearers,  the  next  morning,  is  not  written 
in  the  pages  of  Lehmann,  nor  treasured  in  the  archives  of 
Poggendorf.  Experimental  physiology  teaches  how  to  stop 
the  wheels  of  the  living  machinery,  and  sometimes  how  to 
start  them  when  their  action  is  checked  ;  but  no  observation 
from  the  outside  ever  did  or  ever  will  approach  the  mystery 
of  that  most  intense  of  all  realities — our  relations,  as  respon- 
sible agents,  to  right  and  wrong.  It  will  never  answer,  by 
aid  of  microscope,  or  balance,  or  scalpel,  that  ever-recurring 
question — 

"  Whence  this  pleasing  hope,  this  fond  desire, 
This  longing  after  immortality  ?  " 

The  study  of  physical  and  physiological  phenomena  has 
been  thought  to  lead  to  what  is  called  materialism,  or  some- 
thing worse.  In  spite  of  Galen's  half-Christian  religious 
eloquence — in  spite  of  Haller's  defense  of  the  faith,  and  of 
Boerhaave's  apostolic  piety — we  can  not  forget  the  old  say- 
ing that  where  there  are  three  physicians  there  are  two 
atheists.  It  would  be  almost  as  fair  to  say  that  where  there 
are  three  bank-clerks  there  are  two  rogues.  Unquestion- 
ably, the  handling  of  large  sums  of  money  betrays  into  dis- 


438       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

honesty  some  men  who  would  have  resisted  slighter  tempta- 
tions. So  the  exclusive  study  of  the  bodily  functions  may, 
now  and  then,  lead  away  a  weak  mind  from  the  contempla- 
tion of  the  spiritual  side  of  nature.  The  mind,  like  the 
eye,  has  its  adjustment  to  near  and  remote  objects.  A 
watchmaker  can  find  the  broken  tooth  in  a  ship's  chronom- 
eter quicker  than  the  captain,  and  the  captain  will  detect 
a  sail  in  the  distance  long  before  the  artisan  can  see  it. 
Physiologists  and  metaphysicians  look  at  the  same  objects 
with  different  focal  adjustments ;  but  if  they  deny  the  truths 
out  of  their  own  immediate  range,  their  eyes  have  got  the 
better  of  their  judgment.  If  the  mariner  will  not  trust  his 
chronometer  to  the  expert,  he  loses  his  reckoning ;  if  the 
nice-fingered  myope  should  play  sailor,  the  pirate  would  be 
sure  to  catch  him.  Our  old,  foolish  proverb  is  not,  there- 
fore, wholly  without  its  meaning.  Charlatans  in  physiology, 
who  are  not  so  likely  to  be  found  in  any  other  profession  as 
in  the  one  mentioned,  make  the  mistake  of  confounding  the 
results  derived  from  their  observation  of  the  working  of  cer- 
tain instruments,  in  health  or  disease,  with  those  that  claim 
another  and  a  more  exalted  source.  Our  convictions,  even 
without  special  divine  illumination,  reveal  us  to  ourselves, 
not  as  machines,  but  as  subcreative  centers  of  intelligence 
and  power.  The  two  ranges  of  mental  vision  should  never 
be  confounded  for  good  or  for  bad.  The  laws  of  the  organ- 
ism can  not  be  projected,  a  priori,  on  the  strength  of  the 
profoundest  intuitions.  Hunter's  maxim,  "  Don't  think,  but 
try,"  comes  down  like  a  pile-driver  on  the  audacious  head 
possessed  by  the  delusion  that  it  can  find  out  how  things 
are  by  abstract  speculation  upon  the  question  how  they 
ought  to  be.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  doctrine  of  an 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      439 

immortal  spirit  will  never  come  from  the  dissecting-room  or 
the  laboratory,  unless  it  is  first  carried  thither  from  a  higher 
sphere.  Yet  there  is  nothing  in  these  workshops  that  can 
efface  it,  any  more  than  their  gases  and  exhalations  can  blot 
out  the  stars  of  heaven. 

Thus  what  we  have  to  say  must  be  considered  as  apply- 
ing solely  to  the  living  body,  and  not  to  the  divine  emana- 
tion which,  in  the  human  form,  seems,  but  only  seems,  to 
identify  itself  for  a  while  with  the  shape  it  uses.  We  shall 
not  even  think  it  necessary  to  consider  the  living  body  in 
all  its  attributes.  Animals  have  a  life  in  common  with 
plants ;  they  grow,  they  keep  their  condition,  they  decay ; 
they  reproduce  their  kind,  they  perish ;  and  these  acts,  apart 
from  self-consciousness  or  any  voluntary  agency,  constitute 
them  living  creatures.  This  simplest  and  broadest  aspect 
of  living  nature  is  that  which  we  propose  to  consider. 

Life  may  be  contemplated  either  as  a  condition,  mani- 
fested by  a  group  of  phenomena,  or  as  the  cause  of  that, 
condition.  Looked  at  as  a  condition,  it  is  the  active  state 
peculiar  to  an  organism,  vegetable  or  animal,  which  consists 
in  the  maintenance  of  structural  integrity  by  a  constant  in- 
terchange of  elements  with  surrounding  matter.  This  inter- 
change is  effected  under  the  influence  of  certain  exciting 
agencies,  or  stimuli,  such  as  light  and  heat,  which  are  essen- 
tial to  its  due  performance.  An  egg  or  a  seed  perishing 
undeveloped  has  never  been  excited  into  this  active  state, 
and  therefore  can  not  be  said  to  have  lived.  It  was  only 
for  a  time  capable  of  living,  if  the  proper  stimuli  and  sur- 
rounding matters  had  been  present. 

But  life  may  be  considered,  again,  as  a  cause  of  the  phe- 
nomena just  referred  to,  and  it  is  in  this  aspect  that  we 


440       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

mean  to  regard  it ;  and,  before  attempting  to  examine  our 
special  question,  we  must  remember  the  limits  of  all  our  in- 
quiries with  reference  to  causation.  We  can  hope  for  no- 
thing more,  in  the  way  of  positive  increase  of  knowledge, 
than  these  results  in  any  such  inquiry :  to  detect  the  con- 
stant antecedents  of  any  condition  or  change ;  to  resolve 
one  or  more  antecedents  into  consequents  of  some  previous 
fact ;  to  show  that  one  or  more  of  the  causative  elements  are 
the  same  that  are  productive  of  other  effects ;  and,  lastly,  to 
reproduce  the  effect  by  supplying  the  causative  conditions, 
or  to  prove  the  nature  of  the  constant  antecedent  by  experi- 
ment. As  to  the  essence  of  causation  or  of  force,  in  any  of 
its  aspects,  we  are  no  wiser  than  Newton,  the  profoundest 
student  of  its  laws,  and  the  readiest  to  confess  his  ignorance 
of  its  intimate  nature. 

Let  us  look  first  at  the'  theological  relations  of  an  in- 
quiry into  the  causes  and  nature  of  life.  These,  if  nothing 
else,  may,  we  think,  be  satisfactorily  adjusted. 

Every  action,  or  series  of  actions,  is  referred  by  the 
mind  to  a  force,  and  this  again  to  a  power.  Thus  the  action 
of  a  clock  is  referred  to  the  force  of  the  spring,  and  this 
force  is  the  manifestation  of  a  power  stored  in  the  spring  by 
winding  it  up,  and  set  free  by  giving  the  first  swing  to  the 
pendulum.  We  may  consider  action  as  the  specific  applica- 
tion of  force ;  force  as  the  transfer  of  power,  or  power  in 
transitu  j  power  itself  as  the  original  or  delegated  source  of 
being,  or  of  change  in  its  condition.  Thus  life,  which  ap- 
pears as  a  series  of  actions,  is  referred  to  a  force  commonly 
called  vital,  and  this  to  a  power,  having  its  center  in  the 
Divine  Being ;  for  all  who  recognize  a  Divinity  are  agreed 
that  all  power  comes  from  him.  This  is  what  they  mean 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      44i 

when  they  call  omnipotence  one  of  his  attributes.  The  first 
manifestations  of  force  are  habitually  referred  to  the  same 
original  source.  Thus  we  say  that  the  Creator  gave  motion 
to  the  planets  in  space,  taking  it  for  granted  that  the  Master- 
hand  alone  could  impart  their  original  impulse.  If,  how- 
ever, we  are  asked  why  they  continue  to  roll  on,  we  are  told 
that  the  vis  inertia  keeps  them  from  stopping.  But  this  is  a 
mere  name,  and  we  might  as  well  say  that  the  vis  motus 
starts  a  planet,  as  that  the  vis  inertia  keeps  it  going.  A 
simpler  statement  is  that  the  Divine  agency,  once  in  opera- 
tion, never  changes  without  cause.  We  can  not  allow  force 
to  be  self-sustaining  any  more  than  self-originating,  nor 
matter  itself  to  be  self-subsistent  any  more  than  self-creating. 
"  Actualia  dependent  a  Deo  turn  in  existendo,  turn  in  agen- 
do.  .  .  .  Neque  male  docetur  conservationem  divinam  esse 
continuatam  creationem,  ut  radius  continue  a  sole  prodit." 
Such  are  the  words  of  Leibnitz.  The  apparent  uniformity 
of  force,  and  the  seeming  independent  existence  of  matter, 
lead  us  to  speak  of  them  as  if  their  laws,  as  we  term  them, 
were  absolutely  and  eternally  inherent.  But  a  law  which 
an  omnipotent,  omniscient,  omnipresent  Being  enforces,  is 
plainly  nothing  more  than  the  Lawgiver  himself  at  work. 
This  is  the  meaning  of  that  somewhat  startling  utterance  of 
Oken,  "  The  universe  is  God  rotating."  Transcendental 
Physiology  is  beginning  to  steal  from  the  hymn-books : 

"  With  glory  clad,  with  strength  arrayed, 
The  Lord,  that  o'er  all  nature  reigns, 
The  world's  foundations  strongly  laid, 
And  the  vast  fabric  still  sustains." 

So  sang  Tate-and'  Brady,  paraphrasing  the   royal  David. 


442       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

And  Watts,  still  more  expressly,  in  the  hymn  made  famous 
by  "  the  harp  of  thousand  strings  "  : 

"  His  Spirit  moves  our  heaving  lungs, 
Or  they  would  breathe  no  more." 

Once  giving  in  our  complete  adhesion  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  "  immanent  Deity,"  we  get  rid  of  many  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  speculative  inquiry  into  the  nature  and  origin  of 
things.  This  may  be  an  important  preliminary.  Mr.  New- 
port, the  very  distinguished  physiological  anatomist,  com- 
municated a  paper  to  the  Linnaean  Society,  in  the  year  1845, 
"  On  the  Natural  History  of  the  Oil  Beetle,  Meloe."  It 
contained  the  following  sentence :  "  The  facts  I  have  now 
detailed  lead  me,  in  conformity  with  the  discovery  by  Fara- 
day of  the  analogy  of  light  with  heat,  magnetism,  and  elec- 
tricity, to  regard  light  as  the  primary  source  of  all  vital  and 
instinctive  power,  the  degrees  and  variations  of  which  may, 
perhaps,  be  referred  to  modifications  of  this  influence  on  the 
special  organization  of  each  animal  body."  The  Council  of 
the  Society  objected  to  the  publication  of  the  passage  from 
which  this  is  extracted.  The  Society's  "  Index  Expurga- 
torius  "  would  have  been  more  complete  if  it  had  included 
the  "  Invocation  "  of  the  third  book  of  "  Paradise  Lost," 
which  has  hitherto  escaped  the  Anglican  censorship. 

But  if  the  student  of  nature  and  the  student  of  divinity 
can  once  agree  that  all  the  forces  of  the  universe,  as  well  as 
all  its  power,  are  immediately  dependent  upon  its  Creator — 
that  he  is  not  only  omnipotent,  but  ovcmimovent — we  have  no 
longer  any  fear  of  nebular  theories,  or  doctrines  of  equivocal 
generation,  or  of  progressive  development.  If  we  saw  a 
new  planet  actually  formed  in  the  field  of  the  telescope,  or 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 


443 


the  imaginary  "  Acarus  Crossii  "  put  together  "  de  toutes 
pieces  "  under  the  microscope,  true  to  its  alleged  pedigree — 
out  of  Silex,  by  Galvanism — it  would  no  more  turn  us  into 
atheists  than  a  sight  of  the  mint  would  make  us  doubt  the 
national  credit. 

We  are  ready,  therefore,  to  examine  the  mystery  of  life 
with  the  same  freedom  that  we  should  carry  into  the  exami- 
nation of  any  other  problem ;  for  it  is  only  a  question  of 
what  mechanism  is  employed  in  its  evolution  and  suste- 
nance. 

We  begin,  then,  by  examining  the  general  *  rules  which 
the  Creator  seems  to  have  prescribed  to  his  own  operations. 
We  ask,  in  the  first  place,  whether  he  is  wont,  so  far  as  we 
know,  to  employ  a  great  multitude  of  materials,  patterns, 
and  forces,  or  whether  he  has  seen  fit  to  accomplish  many 
different  ends  by  the  employment  of  a  few  of  these  only. 

In  all  our  studies  of  external  nature,  the  tendency  of  in- 
creasing knowledge  has  uniformly  been  to  show  that  the 
rules  of  creation  are  simplicity  of  material,  economy  of  in- 
ventive effort,  and  thrift  in  the  expenditure  of  force.  All 
the  endless  forms  in  which  matter  presents  itself  to  us  are 
resolved  by  chemistry  into  some  threescore  supposed  simple 
substances,  some  of  these,  perhaps,  being  only  modifications 
of  the  same  element.  The  shapes  of  beasts  and  birds,  of 
reptiles  and  fishes,  vary  in  every  conceivable  degree ;  yet  a 
single  vertebra  is  the  pattern  and  representation  of  the 
framework  of  them  all,  from  eels  to  elephants.  The  identity 
reaches  still  further — across  a  mighty  gulf  of  being — but 
bridges  it  over  with  a  line  of  logic  as  straight  as  a  sunbeam, 
and  as  indestructible  as  the  scimetar-edge  that  spanned  the 
chasm  in  the  fable  of  the  Indian  Hades.  Strange  as  it  may 


444       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

sound,  the  tail  which  the  serpent  trails  after  him  in  the  dust 
and  the  head  of  Plato  were  struck  in  the  die  of  the  same 
primitive  conception,  and  differ  only  in  their  special  adapta- 
tion to  particular  ends.  Again,  the  study  of  the  movements 
of  the  universe  has  led  us  from  their  complex  phenomena  to 
the  few  simple  forces  from  which  they  flow.  The  falling 
apple  and  the  rolling  planet  are  shown  to  obey  the  same 
tendency.  The  stick  of  sealing-wax  that  draws'  a  feather  to 
it,  is  animated  by  the  same  impulse  that  convulses  the 
stormy  heavens. 

These  generalizations  have  simplified  our  view  of  the 
grandest  material  operations,  yet  we  do  not  feel  that  creative 
power  and  wisdom  have  been  shorn  of  any  single  ray  by  the 
demonstrations  of  Newton  or  of  Franklin.  On  the  contrary, 
the  larger  the  collection  of  seemingly  heterogeneous  facts 
we  can  bring  under  the  rule  of  a  single  formula,  the  nearer 
we  feel  that  we  have  reached  toward  the  source  of  knowl- 
edge, and  the  more  perfectly  we  trace  that  little  arc  of  the 
immeasurable  circle  which  comes  within  the  range  of  our 
hasty  observations,  at  first  like  the  broken  fragments  of  a 
many-sided  polygon,  but  at  last  as  a  simple  curve  that  in- 
closes all  we  know  or  can  know  of  nature.  To  our  own  in- 
tellectual wealth,  the  gain  is  like  that  of  the  overburdened 
traveler,  who  should  exchange  hundred-weights  of  iron  for 
ounces  of  gold.  Evanescent,  formless,  unstable,  impalpable, 
a  fog  of  uncondensed  experiences  hovers  over  our  conscious- 
ness like  an  atmosphere  of  uncombined  gases.  One  spark 
of  genius  shoots  through  it,  and  its  elements  rush  together 
and  glitter  before  us  in  a  single  translucent  drop.  It  would 
hardly  be  extravagant  to  call  science  the  art  of  packing 
knowledge. 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      445 

We  are  moving  in  the  right  direction,  therefore,  when 
we  summon  all  the  agencies  of  nature  before  the  tribunal  of 
Science,  and  try  the  question  of  their  identity  under  their 
various  aliases,  just  so  often  as  a  new  set  of  masks  or  dis- 
guises is  detected  in  their  possession.  The  accumulated 
discoveries  of  late  years  have  resulted  in  such  a  trial.  Fol- 
lowing the  same  course  that  Newton  and  Franklin  followed 
in  their  generalizations,  living  philosophers  have  attempted 
to  show  relations  of  mutual  convertibility,  if  not  of  identity, 
between  the  series  of  forces  known  as  light,  heat,  electricity, 
magnetism,  and  chemical  affinity.  Some  leading  facts  indi- 
cating their  intimate  relationship  may  be  very  briefly  re- 
called. 

A  body  heated  to  a  certain  point  becomes  luminous ;  its 
heat  seems  to  pass  over  partly  into  the  condition  of  light. 
Thus  iron  becomes  red-hoi  at  about  1,000°  Fahrenheit. 
Light  may,  perhaps,  be  changed  into,  or  manifest  itself  as, 
heat.  In  Franklin's  famous  experiment,  the  black  cloth, 
which  absorbs  all  the  luminous  rays,  sinks  deepest  into  the 
snow.  Light,  again,  may  act  chemically,  as  heat  does,  as  we 
see  in  the  results  of  photography.  It  may  be  fixed  in  a  body, 
like  heat,  as  is  shown  in  the  Bologna  phosphorus,  which 
shines  for  some  minutes  after  being  exposed  to  sunlight,  or 
to  the  common  light  of  day.  Heat  develops  electricity,  as 
in  the  various  thermo-electric  combinations  of  different 
metals.  Electricity  produces  light,  and  sets  fire  to  combus- 
tibles. The  highest  magnetic  powers  are  developed  in  iron 
by  the  action  of  galvanic  electricity.  The  magnet,  again,  is 
made  to  give  galvanic  shocks  in  a  common  form  of  battery, 
with  the  usual  manifestations  of  light  and  heat.  Chemical 
force  develops  light,  heat,  and  electricity  ;  and  each  of  these 


446       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

is  used  constantly  in  the  laboratory  as  a  practical  means  of 
inducing  chemical  action.  Heat  alone  is  shown,  by  an  ex- 
periment of  Mr.  Grove,  to  be  capable  of  decomposing  water. 
Further  than  this,  as  all  forms  of  motion  are  capable  of  de- 
veloping heat,  or  light,  or  electricity,  according  to  the  con- 
ditions under  which  it  occurs,  and  as  heat  and  electricity 
and  chemical  changes  are  habitually  used  to  produce  motion, 
it  is  questioned  whether  all  the  apparent  varieties  of  force 
are  not  mutually  convertible,  there  being  in  reality  but  one 
kind  of  force,  which  manifests  itself  in  each  of  the  different 
modes  just  spoken  of  according  to  the  material  substratum 
through  which  it  is  passing,  or  some  other  modifying  cause. 
And  as  there  are  facts  indicating  the  existence  of  a  system 
of  equivalents  as  prevailing  in  these  conversions,  or  of  a  fixed 
ratio  between  the  various  convertible  forms  of  force,  so  that 
a  given  electrical  force  will  produce  just  so  much  heat  or 
chemical  decomposition,  and  either  of  these  reproduce  the 
original  amount  of  electricity,  it  has  been  maintained,  that 
the  total  force  of  the  inorganic  universe  is  undergoing  per- 
petual transfer,  but  never  changes  in  amount,  any  more  than 
the  matter  of  the  universe  is  altered  in  quantity  by  change 
of  form. 

This  would  be  the  noblest  of  generalizations,  could  we 
accept  it  without  limit  as  an  established  truth  :  a  few  simple 
elements — the  material  world  formed  by  their  innumerable 
combinations  ;  one  force,  an  effluence  from  the  central  power 
of  creation,  animating  all — binding  atoms,  guiding  systems, 
illuminating,  warming,  renewing,  dissolving,  as  it  passes 
through  the  various  media  of  which  the  unbreathing  universe 
is  made  up. 

We  may  carry  the  generalization  a  step  further.    We  know 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      447 

nothing  of  matter  itself  except  as  a  collection  of  localized 
forces,  points  of  attraction  and  repulsion,  as  Boscovich  ex- 
pressed his  notion  of  its  elements.  Take  a  quartz  crystal  as 
an  example.  It  resists  the  passage  of  certain  other  forces 
through  a  limited  portion  of  space.  It  resists  the  separation 
of  that  sphere  of  resistance  into  two  or  more  parts,  by  means 
of  what  we  call  cohesion.  If  a  ray  of  light  attempts  to  pass 
the  portion  of  space  within  which  these  circumscribed  forces 
have  been  found  to  act,  it  is  thrown  back  or  bent  from  its 
course.  Here,  then,  are  localized  forces,  or  agencies  that 
produce  change ;  the  existence  of  anything  behind  them — 
substance  or  substratum — is  a  mere  hypothesis.  But  while 
the  fluent  forces  of  the  universe  have  been  shown  to  pass 
more  or  less  completely  into  one  another,  these  collections 
of  stationary  forces  which  we  call  matter  have  hitherto 
maintained  their  ground  against  every  attempt  to  reduce 
them  to  unity,  or  to  render  them  in  any  degree  mutually 
convertible.  Our  threescore  groups  of  fixed  forces,  known 
as  simple  substances,  defy  all  further  analysis,  so  far  as  our 
present  power  and  knowledge  extend. 

But  we  must  remember  that,  even  if  the  hypothesis  of  the 
absolute  unity  of  the  various  imponderable  agencies  were 
established  as  a  fact,  we  should  still  have  to  look  somewhere 
between  their  sources  and  our  organs  for  the  difference  in 
their  manifestations.  And  this  could  be  only  in  the  media 
through  which  they  act.  If  electricity  becomes  magnetic 
attraction  in  passing  through  iron,  and  iron  only,  we  must 
look  to  the  metal  for  the  cause  of  its  change  of  form.  Thus 
we  only  transfer  the  differentiating  agency  from  one  sphere 
to  another,  in  consequence  of  the  experimental  inferences 
of  the  physicist  and  the  chemist.  If  chemistry  had  reduced 


448       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

matter  to  some  one  mother-element,  we  should  have  been 
forced  to  refer  all  its  different  manifestations,  such  as  gold, 
sulphur,  oxygen,  and  the  rest,  to  the  influence  of  external 
agencies  operating  through  them.  The  tendency  of  modern 
research,  without  claiming  for  its  inferences  the  character  of 
demonstration,  is  in  the  other  direction :  unity  of  the  fluent 
forces  ;  diversity  of  the  fixed  forces,  or  matter. 

Such  are  the  data  derived  from  the  inorganic  world  with 
which  we  approach  the  consideration  of  the  phenomena  that 
belong  to  organized  beings.  According  to  their  analogies 
we  should  look  for  the  cause  of  any  peculiar  manifestation 
we  might  meet  with  in  the  fixed  forces  or  material  structure 
of  the  organism. 

When  we  commence  the  examination  of  this  material 
structure,  we  find  it  so  different  from  everything  that  we  have 
met  with  in  lifeless  matter,  that  we  are  tempted  to  believe 
it  must  differ  no  less  in  elementary  composition.  The  sub- 
stance of  these  five  hundred  mute  slaves  that  we  call  mus- 
cles, and  the  currents  of  this  "  running  flesh  "  that  we  call 
blood,  seem  unlike  anything  in  earth,  air,  or  waters.  But 
Chemistry  meets  us  with  her  all-searching  analysis,  and  tells 
us  that  this  solid  and  this  fluid,  and  all  the  other  structures 
of  the  body,  however  varied  in  aspect,  are  but  combinations 
of  a  few  elements  which  we  know  well  in  the  laboratories  of 
Nature  and  Art.  A  few  gallons  of  water,  a  few  pounds  of 
carbon  and  of  lime,  some  cubic  feet  of  air,  an  ounce  or  two 
of  phosphorus,  a  few  drachms  of  iron,  a  dash  of  common  salt,, 
a  pinch  of  sulphur,  a  grain  or  more  of  each  of  several  hardly 
essential  ingredients,  and  we  have  man,  according  to  Ber- 
zelius  and  Liebig.  We  have  literally  "  weighed  Hannibal," 
or  his  modern  representative,  and  are  ready  to  answer  Ju- 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      449 

venal's  question.  The  wisest  brain,  the  fairest  face,  and  the 
strongest  arm  before  or  since  Ulysses  and  Helen  and  Aga- 
memnon, were  or  are  made  up  of  these  same  elements,  not 
twenty  in  number,  and  scarcely  a  third  of  the  simple  sub- 
stances known  to  the  chemist.  The  test-tube,  and  the  cru- 
cible, and  the  balance  that  "  cavils  on  the  ninth  part  of  a 
hair,"  have  settled  that  question.  Appearances,  therefore, 
have  proved  deceptive  with  regard  to  the  composition  of 
the  organism. 

Again,  if  we  looked  for  the  first  time  at  the  mode  of  ac- 
tion of  the  living  structure,  we  should  probably  decide  that 
the  forces  at  work  to  produce  the  operations  we  observe 
must  be  of  an  essentially  different  nature  from  those  which 
we  see  manifested  in  brute  matter.  Here  are  solids  sus- 
tained and  fluids  lifted  against  the  force  of  gravity.  Here 
is  heat  generated  without  fire.  Here  is  bread  turned  into 
flesh.  Here  is  a  glairy  and  oily  fluid  shut  up  in  a  tight  cas- 
ket, sealed  by  Nature  as  carefully  as  the  last  will  and  testa- 
ment of  an  heirless  monarch  ;  and  lo  !  what  the  casket  holds 
is  juggled  into  blood,  bone,  marrow,  flesh,  feathers,  by  the 
aid  of  a  little  heat,  which,  increased  a  few  degrees,  might 
give  us  an  omelet  instead  of  a  chicken.  Surely,  we  should 
say,  here  must  be  new  forces,  unknown  to  the  common  forms 
of  matter.  Yet  appearances  may  deceive  us,  as  they  de- 
ceived us  respecting  the  substance  of  the  organism  until  the 
chemist  set  us  right. 

We  must  try  the  actions  just  as  he  has  tried  the  elements. 
We  are  not  bound  to  do  for  them  any  more  than  he  has 
done  for  the  materials  he  has  worked  upon.  If  he  has 
stopped  at  analysis,  and  confessed  that  synthesis  is  beyond 
his  powers,  so  may  we.  He  has  shown  us  the  carbon,  the 
29 


45° 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 


iron,  and  the  other  elements  of  which  blood  and  muscular  fiber 
are  made  up.  But  he  has  never  made  a  drop  of  blood  or  a 
fiber  of  muscle.  We  have  done  as  much  for  physiological 
analysis,  if  we  can  show  that  such  or  such  a  living  action  is 
produced  by  some  form  of  natural  force  with  which  we  are 
acquainted  as  it  appears  in  inorganic  matter,  although  we 
can  not  reproduce  the  living  action  by  artificial  contrivances. 
It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  laboratory  can  present  com- 
bining elements  to  one  another  under  all  the  conditions  fur- 
nished by  the  organism,  nor  that  any  one  living  act  should  be 
imitated  after  the  mutually  interdependent  round  of  move- 
ments has  been  permanently  interrupted. 

Proceeding,  then,  to  our  analysis  of  the  living  actions,  a 
very  superficial  examination  shows  us  that  many  of  the  phys- 
ical agencies  are  manifested  in  the  organism  in  the  same 
way  as  in  ordinary  matter.  Thus  gravity  is  always  at  work 
to  drag  us  down  to  the  earth.  It  holds  us  spread  out  on  the 
nurse's  lap  in  infancy.  We  stand  up  against  it  for  some 
three  or  four  score  years.  Then  it  pulls  us  slowly  down- 
ward again.  The  biped  is  forced  to  become  a  triped.  The 
jaw  falls  by  its  own  weight,  and  must  continually  be  lifted 
again  ;  so  that  old  men,  as  Haller  remarked,  seem  to  be  con- 
stantly chewing.  It  stretches  us  out  at  last,  and  flattens  the 
earth  over  our  bones,  and  so  has  done  with  us.  Our  fluids 
obey  it  during  our  whole  lives.  The  veins  of  the  legs  dilate 
in  tall  men  who  stand  much ;  the  hands  blanch  if  we  hold 
them  up  ;  the'face  reddens  if  we  stoop.  The  same  cohesion 
that  gives  strength  to  knife-handles,  and  tenacity  to  bow- 
strings serves  the  purposes  of  life  in  bones  and  sinews.  The 
valves  of  the  heart  and  vessels,  which  pointed  Harvey  to  the 
discovery  of  the  circulation,  proclaim  the  obedience  of  the 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 


451 


fluids  to  the  laws  of  hydraulics.  The  tear-passages  are 
filled  by  the  force  of  capillary  attraction.  The  skin  soaks 
up  fluids  and  allows  them  to  escape  through  it,  as  membranes 
and  films  of  paper  and  sheets  of  unglazed  porcelain  do  in 
our  experiments.  The  chemical  reactions  between  the  blood 
and  the  atmosphere,  and  between  the  gastric  juice  and  the 
food,  may  be  imitated  very  successfully  out  of  the  body. 
The  eye  and  the  ear  recognize  the  ordinary  laws  of  light 
and  sound  in  all  their  arrangements.  Levers,  pulleys,  and 
even  the  wheel  and  axle,  play  their  usual  part  in  the  passive 
transfer  of  the  forces  that  move  the  living  machinery. 

These  facts,  and  many  others  of  similar  character  which 
might  be  mentioned,  point  to  the  following  conclusion :  If 
there  is  a  special  force  acting  in  the  living  organism,  it  must 
exist  in  addition  to  the  general  forces  of  nature,  and  not  as 
a  substitute  for  them.  To  know  whether  such  a  special 
force  is  necessary,  or  whether  the  general  forces  of  nature 
are  sufficient,  we  must  know  what  these  last  are  capable 
of  doing,  and  what  they  can  not  do,  and  must  compare 
their  ascertained  power  and  its  limitatfbns  with  the  living 
task  to  be  performed.  This  is  the  next  point  to  be  exam- 
ined. 

That  form  of  force  which  we  call  chemical  affinity  is 
capable  of  giving  an  indefinite  number  of  aspects  and  quali- 
ties to  matter,  by  varying  the  proportions  and  mode  of  com- 
bination of  a  few  simple  elements.  Oxygen  and  nitrogen, 
which  are  the  breath  of  our  nostrils,  become  a  corrosive 
fluid  when  united  in  certain  simple  proportions  differing 
from  those  of  atmospheric  air.  The  same  elements,  in  varied 
combinations,  serve  us  as  food,  or  form  a  fluid,  one  drop  of 
which  kills  almost  like  a  stroke  of  lightning.  Thus  there  is 


452       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

nothing  exceptional  in  the  fact  that  the  compounds  of  the 
vegetable  or  animal  structure  should  present  the  distinctive 
characters  by  which  we  know  them  as  starch  or  fat,  as  fiber 
or  muscle. 

Neither  does  there  appear  to  be  anything  in  the  mere 
fact  of  assimilation  which  establishes  a  distinct  line  of  de- 
markation  between  the  living  and  the  lifeless  world.  A 
crystal,  from  a  solution  containing  several  salts,  appropriates 
just  the  materials  adapted  to  build  up  its  own  substance. 
A  lichen  does  nothing  more.  The  air  is  a  solution  of  the 
elements  that  form  it,  and  it  appropriates  and  fixes  them. 
The  penetration  of  the  new  materials  into  the  organic  struc- 
ture, and  their  interstitial  distribution  among  its  parts,  might 
seem  to  draw  the  line  of  distinction.  But  this  is  very  limited 
in  many  plants,  and  depends  on  their  mechanical  arrange- 
ment, one  division  growing  upon  the  outside  and  another 
upon  the  inside.  The  porosity  of  organized  beings  which 
favors  this  mode  of  nutrition  is  nothing  but  an  increase 
of  internal  surface ;  soluble  nutritive  matters  are  diffused 
through  their  textures  just  as  water  and  other  fluids  pass 
into  the  pores  of  the  Spanish  alcarraza  ;  and  there  is  no 
reason  why  this  internal  surface  should  not  appropriate  new 
matter,  as  well  as  the  external  surface  of  a  mineral. 

The  constancy  of  specific  form  is  not  more  absolute  in 
organized  beings  than  in  crystals.  The  difference  between 
different  crystalline  shapes  of  the  same  mineral  is  not  greater 
than  that  of  the  grub  and  the  butterfly,  or  of  the  floating  and 
the  fixed  medusa. 

Nor  is  a  certain  limitation  of  size  a  distinguishing  mark 
of  vitality.  Some  crystals  are  microscopic,  some  needle- 
like,  some  columnar.  No  diamond  was  ever  found  too 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      453 

heavy  for  a  lady's  coronet;  but  there  are  beryls  which  it 
would  break  a  man's  back  to  carry. 

The  plant  and  the  animal  have  been  thought  to  be  pecu- 
liar in  maintaining  their  integrity  by  continual  waste  and 
renewal.  They  are  a  perpetual  "  whirlpool,"  into  which 
new  matter  is  constantly  passing,  and  from  which  the  ma- 
terials that  have  been  used  'are  always  being  thrown  out. 
It  might  at  first  seem  hard  to  match  this  condition  by  any 
fact  from  the  inorganic  world.  But,  from  time  immemorial, 
life  has  been  compared  to  a  flame,  a  spark,  a  torch,  a  candle: 

"  Et,  quasi  cursores,  vitae  lampada  tradunt." 

The  inverted  flambeau  of  the  ancients  is  still  a  frequent 
symbol  in  our  rural  cemeteries.  Macbeth,  Othello,  John  of 
Gaunt,  have  made  the  image  familiar  to  us  in  different  forms : 

"  My  oil-dried  lamp,  and  time-bewasted  light, 
Shall  be  extinct  with  age  and  endless  night." 

The  simile  is  in  fact  a  little  fatigued  with  long  use,  and  the 
Humane  Society  is  hardly  true  to  its  name  when  it  tolerates 
the  expression  that  "  the  vital  spark  was  extinct."  But  this 
is  the  very  object  of  comparison  that  we  here  want,  not  for 
ornament  but  use.  Professor  Draper  has  beautifully  drawn 
the  parallel  between  the  flame  and  the  plant.  The  flame  is 
not  living,  yet  it  grows ;  it  is  fed  by  incessant  waste  and 
supply ;  and  it  dies  at  length,  exhausted,  clogged,  or  sud- 
denly quenched.  The  plant  must  suck  up  fluid  by  its  wick- 
like  roots,  as  well  as  the  lamp  by  its  root-like  wick.  The 
leaves  must  let  it  evaporate,  as  does  the  alcohol  in  an  unpro- 
tected spirit-lamp.  Here,  then,  is  the  mechanism  of  per- 


454 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 


petual  interstitial  change,  which  we  have  a  right  to  say  may 
be  purely  physical  in  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other. 

We  need  not  wonder,  in  view  of  this  perpetual  change 
of  material,  that  the  living  body,  as  a  whole,  resists  decom- 
position. The  striking  picture  drawn  by  Cuvier  in  his  in- 
troduction to  the  "  Comparative  Anatomy,"  in  which  the 
living  loveliness  of  youthful  beauty  is  contrasted  with  the 
fearful  changes  which  a  few  hours  will  make  in  the  lifeless 
form,  loses  its  apparent  significance  when  we  remember  the 
necessary  consequence  of  the  arrest  of  its  interior  move- 
ments. The  living  body  is  like  a  city  kept  sweet  by  drains 
running  underground  to  every  house,  into  which  the  water 
that  supplies  the  wants  of  each  household  is  constantly 
sweeping  its  refuse  matters.  The  dead  body  is  the  same 
city,  with  its  drains  choked  and  its  aqueducts  dry.  The 
individual  system,  like  the  mass  of  collective  life  that 
constitutes  a  people,  is  continually  undergoing  interstitial 
decomposition.  If  we  take  in  a  ton  every  twelvemonth, 
in  the  shape  of  food,  drink,  and  air,  and  get  rid  of  only 
a  quarter  of  it  unchanged  into  our  own  substance,  we 
die  ten  times  a  year  —  not  all  of  us  at  any  one  time, 
but  a  portion  of  us  at  every  moment.  It  is  a  curious 
consequence  of  this,  we  may  remark  by  the  way,  that 
if  the  refuse  of  any  of  our  great  cities  were  properly 
economized,  its  population  would  eat  itself  over  and  over 
again  in  the  course  of  every  generation.  We  consume  no- 
thing. Our  food  is  like  those  everlasting  pills  that  old  phar- 
macopoeias tell  of,  heirlooms  for  the  dura  ilia  of  successive 
generations.  But  we  change  what  we  receive,  first  into  our 
own  substance,  then  into  waste  matter ;  and  we  have  no  evi- 
dence that  any  single  portion  of  the  body  resists  decompo- 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 


455 


sition    longer  during  life  than  after  death.     Only,  all  that 
decays  is  at  once  removed  while  the  living  state  continues. 

As  for  our  inability,  already  referred  to,  to  imitate  most 
of  the  organic  compounds,  it  is  no  more  remarkable  than 
our  inability  to  manufacture  precious  stones.  Some  combi- 
nations take  place  readily  ;  others  require  the  most  delicately 
adjusted  conditions.  Potassium  and  oxygen  rush  into  each 
other's  arms  like  true  lovers.  Iron  blushes  a  tardier  con- 
sent before  changing  its  maiden  name  for  oxide.  The 
"  noble  metals  "  are  coy  to  the  great  elemental  wooer ;  they 
must  be  tampered  with  by  go-betweens  before  they  will 
yield.  Chlorine  and  hydrogen  unite  with  a  violent  explo- 
sion, if  exposed  to  sunlight.  Hydrogen  and  oxygen  resist 
the  mediation  of  the  sunbeams,  but  come  together  with 
sudden  vehemence  if  crossed  by  the  electric  spark  or  touched 
by  a  flame.  Most  bodies  must  be  dissolved  before  they  will 
form  alliances;  "corpora  non  agunt nisi  soluta."  Some  can 
combine  only  in  the  nascent  state ;  like  princes,  they  must 
be  betrothed  in  their  cradles.  There  is  nothing  strange, 
then,  in  the  fact  that  combinations  formed  in  the  vegetable 
or  animal  laboratory  should  be  hard  to  imitate  out  of  the 
body.  Yet  the  chemist  has  already  succeeded  in  forming 
urea ;  and  artificial  digestive  fluids,  borrowing  nothing  from 
life  but  a  bit  of  dried  and  salted  rennet,  do  their  work  quite 
as  well  as  the  gastric  juice  of  many  dyspeptic  professors. 
These  instances  show  us  that,  if  we  can  only  supply  the 
necessary  conditions,  the  chemical  forces  are  always  ready. 
Nature  expects  every  particle  of  carbon,  and  the  rest,  to  do 
its  duty  under  all  circumstances.  The  digestive  secretions 
often  devour  the  stomach  after  death.  A  drowned  man  is 
restored  by  artificial  respiration ;  the  air  forced  into  the 


456       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

lungs  changes  the  blood  in  their  capillary  vessels ;  the  blood 
thus  changed  is  enabled  to  flow  more  freely;  the  heart  is 
unloaded  of  its  stagnant  contents,  and  roused  to  action ;  the 
round  of  vital  acts  is  once  more  set  in  motion ;  and  all  this 
because  carbon  and  oxygen  are  always  true  to  each  other. 

We  are  obliged  to  confess,  as  the  result  of  this  examina- 
tion, that  the  inherent  and  inalienable  relations  of  the  ele- 
ments found  in  the  living  organism  may  be  sufficient  to 
account  for  all  the  acts  of  composition  and  decomposition 
observed  during  life,  without  invoking  that  special  "  chimie 
vivante  "  which  Broussais  and  others  have  supposed  to  be 
one  of  the  properties  of  organization. 

There  is  another  mode  of  operation  found  in  animals 
and  vegetables,  which  has  been  considered  as  depending 
upon  special  vital)  in  distinction  from  physical,  causes. 
This  is  the  process  by  which  certain  bodies  are  selected 
from  others  for  absorption  or  secretion ;  as  when  the  chyle 
is  taken  up  by  the  lacteals,  and  the  bile  is  separated  from 
the  blood  by  the  liver.  To  account  for  this,  the  organs 
have  been  supposed  to  possess  a  certain  "  low  intelligence," 
which  directs  them  in  this  selection.  Yet  there  is  evidence 
that  the  ordinary  physical  laws  are  not  idle  in  these  opera- 
tions, and  it  is  fair  to  ask  if  they  may  not  be  the  only  real 
agencies.  The  lacteals  will  not  take  up  oily  matters  until 
they  have  been  turned  into  an  emulsion  by  the  pancreatic 
fluid ;  just  as  a  wick  wetted  with  water  will  not  take  up  oil 
until  this  is  emulsified,  or  made  a  soap  of. 

We  may  still  inquire  why  each  secreting  gland  forms  or 
transmits  its  own  special  product,  and  no  other ;  why  the 
liver  secretes  only  bile,  and  the  lachrymal  gland  only  tears. 
We  can  see  nothing  in  the  anatomical  formation  of  these 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      457 

organs  to  account  for  their  peculiar  modes  of  action.  But 
there  are  many  phenomena  of  simple  physical  transudation 
equally  unexplained.  When  water  and  alcohol  are  separated 
by  a  membrane,  a  current  is  established  between  the  fluids 
in  both  directions,  that  from  the  water  to  the  alcohol — the 
denser  to  the  lighter — being  the  most  rapid.  When  a  simi- 
lar experiment  is  performed  with  sirup  and  water,  the  cur- 
rent is  from  the  water  to  the  sirup — the  lighter  to  the  denser. 
When  the  same  fluids  are  employed,  the  nature  and  position 
of  the  membrane  used  occasion  differences  which  we  can 
not  explain.  With  the  skin  of  a  frog,  the  current  from  the 
water  is  most  rapid  when  the  internal  surface  is  toward  the 
alcohol.  But,  with  an  eel-skin,  the  reversed  position  is  most 
favorable  to  the  flow  in  the  same  direction. 

Again,  in  the  phenomena  of  precipitation,  as  seen  in  the 
laboratory,  we  have  an  illustration  of  the  chemical  side  of 
secretion.  Two  clear  fluids  are  mixed,  and  one  of  them 
immediately  separates  or  secretes  one  or  more  of  its  elements 
as  a  distinct  product ;  or  both  may  be  decomposed  with 
entire  transformation  of  aspect  and  properties.  Or  a  simple 
solid  substance  is  introduced  into  a  fluid  compound,  and  at 
once  seizes  upon  some  constituent,  and  appropriates  it,  as 
when  iron  is  immersed  in  solutions  of  salts  of  copper.  Still 
more  striking  is  the  well-known  action  of  spongy  platinum 
in  producing  the  combination  of  hydrogen  and  oxygen,  with- 
out undergoing  any  chemical  change  itself. 

Let  us  see  whether  some  of  these  same  physical  opera- 
tions may  not  be  manifested  in  the  liver,  taking  this  as  the 
typical  secreting  organ.  Its  cell-walls  may  govern  their 
currents  of  transudation  by  laws  of  their  own,  as  eel-skins 
and  frog-skins  govern  the  currents  of  alcohol  and  water. 


458       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

The  two  kinds  of  blood  that  meet  in  its  capillary  vessels 
may  react  upon  each  other,  and  produce  mutual  decomposi- 
tion, as  well  as  any  other  compound  fluids.  The  substance 
of  the  liver  has  as  much  right  to  appropriate  fat,  without  a 
special  license  from  vitality,  as  the  iron,  in  the  experiment 
referred  to  above,  to  appropriate  copper.  It  may  have  as 
good  a  title  from  the  Supreme  Authority  to  join  the  elements 
that  form  cholesterine,  as  spongy  platinum  to  unite  hydrogen 
and  oxygen.  This  catalytic  agency — the  priestly  office  of 
chemical  nature  that  gives  to  one  body  the  power  of  marry- 
ing innumerable  pairs  of  loving  atoms,  itself  standing  apart 
in  elemental  celibacy — is  not  to  be  denied  its  possible  place 
in  the  living  mechanism.  Its  action  may,  perhaps,  be  more 
extended  than  in  inanimate  bodies.  The  instances  furnished 
by  the  action  of  the  pancreatic  fluid  and  the  gastric  juice 
may  belong  to  a  far  more  numerous  series  o"  similar  phe- 
nomena. We  may  grant  a  difference  of  degree  between  the 
separations  or  secretions  effected  by  the  reactions  between 
the  complex  elements  of  the  organism  and  those  witnessed 
in  unorganized  matter ;  but  the  difference  of  essential  na- 
ture is  less  easily  demonstrated. 

But  it  will  be  said  that  the  several  parts  select  their 
special  secretions  with  reference  to  the  general  wants  of  the 
system.  If  there  is  no  evidence  of  adaptation  of  parts  to  a 
whole  anywhere  except  in  living  beings,  then  we  must  allow 
that  here  is  a  difference  in  kind  as  well  as  in  degree,  which 
it  would  be  hard  to  reconcile  with  the  supposition  that  the 
same  forces  are  the  sole  agents  in  both  cases.  But  it  is  vain 
to  deny  that  the  macrocosm  shows  the  same  adaptation  of 
parts  as  the  microcosm.  When  the  Resolute  was  found 
adrift  and  boarded  by  the  American  sailors,  there  was  no 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      459 

sail  on  her  masts,  and  no  hand  at  her  helm.  Yet  there  was 
just  as  much  evidence  in  her  build  and  equipments  that  she 
was  framed  and  provided  for  a  definite  purpose  as  if  the 
good  ship  had  been  seen  with  all  her  men  at  the  ropes  and 
the  steersman  at  the  wheel,  following  a  lead  into  the  ice- 
fields of  the  North.  So  if  the  earth  had  been  visited  by 
some  wandering  spirit  before  a  fern  had  spread  its  leaves, 
or  a  trilobite  had  clashed  his  scales,  the  evidence  of  adapta- 
tion of  its  several  parts  to  one  another,  as  well  as  to  ulterior 
ends,  would  have  been  clear  as  the  sun  that  shone  upon  its 
primeval  strata.  Its  steady  circuit  through  the  heavens,  ex- 
posing it  on  all  sides  to  light  and  shade  in  succession  ;  the 
qualities  of  matter  that  lead  its  various  forms  to  arrange 
themselves  as  shapeless  matrix,  or  geometrical  solid,  into 
ever  downward-sinking  waters  and  ever  upward-rising  at- 
mospheres ;  the  self-preserving  and  self-classifying  tendency, 
constantly  at  work  to  educe  new  harmonies  out  of  the  de- 
stroying conflict  of  the  active  powers  of  nature — show  that 
the  adaptation  of  parts  to  the  whole  is  wider  than  the  realm 
and  older  than  the  reign  of  life. 

All  the  physical  laws,  in  and  out  of  the  organism,  are  ar- 
ranged in  harmony  with  one  another.  Each  organ  of  a  plant 
or  an  animal  is  supported  by  and  accountable  to  the  general 
system.  But  this  system  holds  the  same  relations  to  the 
surrounding  universe.  Every  creature  that  is  born  has  an 
account  opened  at  once  with  Nature — debtor  by  so  much  of 
carbon,  oxygen,  hydrogen,  azote  ;  creditor  by  so  much  car- 
bonic acid  and  ammonia,  or  whatever  may  be  the  medium 
of  payment.  Life  is  adapted  to  maintain  a  certain  normal 
composition  of  the  atmosphere,  as  much  as  the  atmosphere 
to  maintain  life.  And  as  air  existed  before  plant  or  animal 


460       THE  MECHANISM  OF   VITAL  ACTIONS. 

lived  to  breathe  it,  and  as  air  is  made  up  of  at  least  three 
elements,  each  of  these,  considered  as  a  part,  was  adjusted 
in  quality  and  quantity  to  the  whole  with  the  same  fitness 
that  we  see  in  the  relation  of  the  amount  and  quality  of  the 
bile  as  compared  with  the  other  secretions  and  the  wants  of 
the  system. 

But  the  living  system  protects  itself  by  special  provisions, 
it  will  be  said  ;  look  at  the  thickened  cuticle  upon  the  work- 
ingman's  hand,  and  see  how  admirably  it  shields  the  sensi- 
tive surface.  True  ;  and  see  also  how  delightfully  the  same 
thickened  cuticle  acts  in  the  case  of  a  corn.  The  avidity 
with  which  the  most  deadly  substances  are  sucked  in  by  the 
skin — the  suddenness  with  which  a  single  drop  of  poison 
will  work  its  way  through  the  system  from  the  surface  of  a 
mucous  membrane — shows  us  that  the  same  force  acts  for 
good  or  bad  indifferently ;  that  is,  it  is  under  the  general 
law  of  harmony,  but  not  modified  to  meet  accidental  condi- 
tions. Just  so  in  the  greater  universe,  the  tide  rises  by -one  of 
its  beneficent  provisions,  wafting  a  hundred  fleets  into  their 
harbors,  but  not  less  surely  drowning  the  poor  wretches  who 
are  caught  on  the  sands  by  its  advancing  waters.  "  Faugh 
a  ballagh !  " — "  Clear  the  coast !  " — is  the  word  when  we  get 
across  the  track  of  any  natural  agency.  We  must  not  ex- 
pect it  to  turn  out  for  any  particular  end ;  the  Creator  has 
imparted  no  such  wisdom  to  matter. 

The  course  of  a  single  ray  of  light  is  the  eternal  illustra- 
tion of  the  Divine  mode  of  action.  It  is  always  in  straight 
lines.  The  difference  between  our  utilitarian  methods,  al- 
ways looking  to  special  ends,  and  the  Supreme  handling  of 
things  in  their  universal  aspect,  is  beautifully  shown  in  the 
structure  of  one  of  our  domestic  animals.  If  a  watchmaker 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      461 

should  insist  on  putting  into  a  common  watch  one  little 
wheel,  unseen,  and  unconnected  with  the  rest  of  the  ma- 
chinery, because  he  had  made  repeaters  which  required  such 
a  wheel,  we  should  smile  at  his  lost  labor.  But  there  is  a 
little  collar-bone,  too  small  to  be  of  any  use,  floating  in  the 
midst  of  the  muscles  about  a  cat's  shoulder,  which  is  as  con- 
stant as  if  the  animal's  welfare  depended  upon  it.  Why  is 
it  there  ?  It  is  the  vanishing  point  of  a  series  of  models 
formed  on  one  general  plan.  The  plan,  as  a  whole,  is  a 
monument  of  infinite  wisdom,  adapted  to  the  various  needs 
of  a  numerous  series  of  conscious  beings.  But  it  is  so  vast 
that  it  includes  what  we  call  utility  as  one  of  its  accidents, 
and  this  anatomical  fact  shows  us  one  of  the  borders  at 
which  the  Divine  conception  overlaps  the  temporary  appli- 
cation. The  human  artisan  is  wise  in  leaving  out  the  wheel 
when  it  is  no  longer  wanted.  But  the  seemingly  trivial  ar- 
rangement just  mentioned  shows  that  the  Deity  respects  a 
normal  type  more  than  a  practical  fact.  His  thoughts  and 
his  ways  are  not  as  ours. 

The  limited  duration  of  existence  might  be  thought  to  be 
characteristic  of  organic  being.  But,  in  the  first  place,  this 
fact  is  not  so  universal  and  absolute  as  might  be  supposed. 
De  Candolle  long  since  promulgated  the  doctrine  that  trees 
live  indefinitely,  and  never  die  but  from  injury  or  disease. 
The  death  of  our  great  forest-trees  is  commonly  owing  to 
fracture,  in  consequence  of  the  decay  of  the  inner  portion 
of  the  stem,  which  no  longer  performs  any  but  a  mechanical 
office.  On  the  other  hand,  many  crystals  undergo  decom- 
position, of  form  at  least,  within  a  longer  or  shorter  period, 
by  efflorescence  or  deliquescence.  The  very  conditions  of 
organic  life  imply  a  liability  to  disable  its  implements.  A 


462       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

river  chokes  up  its  own  bed  with  detritus ;  a  chimney  fills 
itself  up  with  soot.  The  organism  is  a  multilocular  sac  of 
fluids  that  are  loaded  with  dissolved  and  suspended  matters. 
The  smoke  of  life  ascends  from  innumerable  pores  of  animal 
bodies,  from  the  first  gasp  to  the  last  breath  that  is  expelled. 
What  marvel  that  the  vessels  become  thickened,  and  the 
working  organs  clogged  with  accumulating  deposits?  We 
can  only  wonder,  with  the  hymn  to  which  we  have  referred, 
that  the  harmony  of  so  exquisitely  adjusted  a  mechanism 
should  be  so  long  maintained,  and  not  at  all  at  the  brevity 
of  life  in  any  of  its  forms,  or  the  diversity  of  its  duration. 

But  there  is  the  great  mystery  of  reproduction.  Are 
there  any  acts  of  inorganic  nature  parallel  to  those  that  take 
place  in  the  development  of  an  embryo  of  one  of  the  higher 
animals  ?  This  development  may  be  decomposed  into  the 
following  separate  elements  :  i.  A  movement  of  assimilation 
imparted  by  an  organism  to  a  separable  product  of  secretion 
or  of 'growth;  2.  A  differentiating  movement,  which  divides 
and  arranges  the  formative  materials  into  the  substance  of 
tissues  and  organs  ;  3.  A  modeling  force,  or  shaping  agency, 
which  determines  the  form  of  the  several  parts  and  of  the 
whole ;  4.  A  coordinating  force,  which  brings  the  various 
separate  acts  into  harmony  with  one  another,  the  motus  re- 
gius  of  Lord  Bacon. 

Now,  the  question  is,  not  whether  all  these  actions  are 
combined  in  any  other  known  group  of  material  changes 
than  embryonic  development,  but  whether  any  one  of  them 
is  absolutely  sui  generis.  And  first,  we  do  not  see  why  mo- 
lecular movements  may  not  be  imparted  by  one  portion  of 
matter  to  another,  as  well  as  movements  in  mass.  Fire  is  so 
propagated,  and  forms  a  new  center  independent  of  its 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      463 

origin.  Magnetism  is  imparted  from  one  body  to  another, 
without  diminution  of  its  intensity  in  the  first.  Secondly, 
the  rending  apart  of  the  most  intimately  combined  elements, 
and  their  distribution  to  the  positive  and  negative  poles  re- 
spectively, may  illustrate  the  separation  of  the  several  con- 
stituents of  the  embryonic  structure  from  one  another.  A 
very  weak  current  will  decompose  saline  mixtures,  and  even 
refractory  oxides.  Heat  alone,  as  we  have  seen,  will  de- 
compose water.  Is  it  not  in  harmony  with  these  physical 
facts,  that  a  weak  current  of  heat,  long  continued,  as  in 
incubation,  should  induce  the  separation  and  yuasz-polsiT 
arrangement  of  the  loosely  combined  atoms  that  are  to  form 
the  embryo  ?  Thirdly,  is  not  the  shaping  power  more  ob- 
vious in  the  rhombs  of  a  fragment  of  Iceland  spar  than  in 
the  disk  of  a  lichen,  which  falls  on  a  stone  and  spreads  just 
as  a  drop  of  rain  would  spread  ?  We  may,  in  fact,  see  the 
two  forms  of  the  modeling  process— Nature's  plane  and 
spherical  geometry — in  operation  side  by  side  in  the  same 
structure.  The  raphides,  or  included  crystals,  which  we 
often  find  in  great  abundance  in  vegetable  cells — those  of 
the  onion,  for  instance — illustrate  the  point  in  question. 
Lastly,  we  have  already  seen  cause  to  deny  that  the  princi- 
ple of  harmony  of  parts,  or  multiplicity  in  unity,  can  be  con- 
fined to  living  bodies,  without  overlooking  the  most  obvious 
adjustments  of  the  elements  of  general  nature  to  one  another 
and  to  one  great  plan.  "  The  wonderful  uniformity  in  the 
planetary  system,"  says  Newton,  "must  be  allowed  the  effect 
of  choice;  and  so  must  the  uniformity  in  the  bodies  of 
animals." 

It  appears,  from  the  survey  we  have  taken,  that  we  might 
expect,  from  the  general  character  of  the  creative  plan,  that, 


464       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

as  preexisting  materials  were  employed  to  form  organic  struc- 
tures, so  preexisting  force  or  forces  would  be  employed  to 
maintain  organic  actions  or  unconscious  life.  It  is  certain 
that  the  materials  of  the  organism  are  to  a  great  extent  sub- 
ject to  the  common  laws  of  mechanical  and  chemical  forces. 
It  is  not  proved  that  these  same  forces  are  incompetent  to 
produce  the  whole  series  of  interstitial  changes  in  which  the 
functions  of  life  common  to  vegetables  and  animals  consist. 
On  the  contrary,  the  more  we  vary  our  experiments  and  ex- 
tend our  observation,  the  more  difficult  we  find  the  task  of 
assigning  limits  to  their  power.  The  preservation  of  specific 
form  and  dimensions  has  not  appeared  to  be  confined  to 
living  beings.  The  cooperation  of  the  parts  of  an  organized 
structure  does,  indeed,  imply  a  plan,  or  preestablished  har- 
mony, but  no  more  than  the  arrangement  of  the  spheres  or 
the  relations  of  the  elements  to  one  another.  Each  little 
world  of  life  shows  only  the  same  solidarity,  on  a  small  scale, 
that  prevents  the  universe  from  being  a  chaos.  Limits  of 
duration  are  not  peculiar  to  living  beings,  nor  always  evident 
in  them.  Reproduction  combines  several  modes  of  action, 
no  one  of  which  is  without  its  inorganic  parallel. 

Given,  then,  a  plant  or  a  man,  there  seems  no  good  rea- 
son why  either  should  not  begin  to  live  with  all  its  might  so 
soon  as  the  conditions  of  light,  heat,  air — whatever  stimuli 
or  food  it  requires — shall  be  made  to  act  upon  it.  Such  is 
the  case  with  the  drowned  man  who  is  "brought  to  life." 
He  was  defunct  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  except  that  the 
organs  and  fluids  had  not  had  time  to  become  clogged  or 
decomposed,  when  a  whiff  of  air  set  the  whole  machinery 
going  again.  "  Two  is  my  number,"  said  Sir  Charles  Napier. 
"  Two  wives,  two  daughters,  two  sons,  and  two  deaths.  I 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      465 

died  at  Corunna,  and  now  the  grim  old  villain  approaches 
again."  Life  is  not  the  absolute  unit  we  suppose.  If  a  man 
is  dead  who  "breathes  his  last,"  or  " expires,"  such  dead 
men  have  unquestionably  been  restored  to  life  without  a 
miracle.  In  other  words,  a  man  may  be  dead  conditionally 
— dead,  unless  there  happen  to  be  a  double  bellows  or  a  gal- 
vanic battery  in  the  neighborhood,  and  some  one  who  knows 
how  to  use  it.  But  if  a  man  is  not  dead  so  long  as  any  so- 
called  living  process  goes  on,  then  most  men  are  buried  alive ; 
for  there  is  no  doubt  that  certain  secretions — the  mucous  se- 
cretion among  others,  as  one  of  our  best  pathologists  thinks 
— take  place  for  a  considerable  time  after  a  person  has  "ex- 
pired." Probably  a  certain  number  of  those  who  have  just 
died  or  expired  could  be  resuscitated  to  movement,  if  not  to 
consciousness,  by  artificial  respiration,  if  it  were  a  thing  to 
be  desired.  The  reason  that  they  can  not  be  permanently 
restored,  like  those  rescued  from  the  water,  is  that  some 
organ  or  fluid  has  undergone  an  important  injury  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases,  if  not  in  all. 

Life  is  a  necessary  attribute,  then,  of  a  perfect  organism 
exposed  to  the  proper  external  influences,  just  as  much  as 
gravity  belongs  to  a  metal,  or  hardness  to  a  diamond.  Just 
as  the  Creator,  in  calling  the  material  elements  into  exist- 
ence, contemplated  their  fitness  to  form  a  part  of  the  living 
creation  yet  to  be,  so  did  he  also  diffuse  such  forces,  or  forms 
of  force,  through  the  world  as  should  of  necessity  manifest 
themselves  through  any  perfect  organism  as  what  we  call  life. 
Such  is  the  conclusion  pointed  at  by  the  range  of  analogies 
we  have  adduced.  A  vast  number  of  facts  testify  in  its 
favor,  and  it  is  hard  to  find  any  that  oppose  it  which  can  not 
be  explained.  Whatever  incomprehensible  mystery  there 
30 


466       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

may  have  been  in  the  first  fabrication  of  these  living  time- 
keepers that  measure  ages  in  their  conscious  or  unconscious 
movements,  one  common  key  seems  enough  to  wind  them  all 
up  and  set  them  going.  We  may  not  accept  Mr.  Newport's 
generalization  as  to  light,  but,  whatever  form  of  force  we 
may  recognize  as  iheflrimum  mobile  in  the  series  of  organic 
movements,  we  are  contented  to  accept  as  the  chosen  mode 
of  action  of  the  all-pervading  Presence.  If  the  Deity  has 
seen  fit  to  make  one  agent  serve  many  purposes,  the  fact 
will  be  acquiesced  in,  in  the  face  of  the  threatened  San 
Benitos  of  all  the  Linnaean  societies. 

The  battle-ground  of  atheism  is  not  in  the  field  of 
natural  science ;  meaning  by  that  the  study  of  material  phe- 
nomena. The  argument  from  design  to  an  intelligent  con- 
triver does  not  require  the  knowledge  of  Cuvier  or  Hum- 
boldt  to  make  it  satisfactory.  Every  man  carries  about  with 
him  in  his  own  organization  a  syllogism  which  all  the  logic 
in  the  world  can  never  mend.  If  his  skepticism  will  not 
melt  away  in  such  an  ocean  of  evidence,  it  is  because  it  is 
insoluble.  Whatever  contrivances  have  been  employed,  the 
grand  result  of  an  immeasurable  whole,  all  the  parts  of 
which  are  fitted  together  with  a  foresight  and  wisdom  which 
it  mocks  the  human  intellect  to  attempt  to  sound,  except 
along  its  shallower  edges,  remains  to  be  accounted  for,  and 
Paley's  argument  from  the  watch  to  its  maker  illustrates  the 
simple  course  of  reasoning  which  the  healthy  mind  is  natu- 
rally forced  to  follow. 

The  evidence  we  have  been  considering  applies  to  the 
perfect  and  mature  organism,  and  does  not  reach  the  ques- 
tion how  such  organisms  first  came  into  being.  Who  shall 
tell  us  whether  the  first  egg  was  parent  or  offspring  of  the 


THE  MECHANISM  OF   VITAL  ACTIONS.      467 

first  fowl?  The  poet  must  answer  for  the  philosopher. 
Milton  has  ventured  to  paraphrase  the  Scriptural  account 
of  creation  with  a  freedom  not  always  allowed  to  modern 
science.  "The  tepid  caves,  and  fens,  and  shores  "hatch 
their  feathered  broods  from  eggs.  The  grassy  clods  become 
the  mothers  of  young  cattle.  The  bees  appear,  not  a  single 
pair,  but  "  swarming,"  as  our  own  naturalists  tell  us  they 
must  have  appeared.  But  our  prosaic  evidence  as  to  the 
introduction  of  the  forms  of  life  upon  our  planet  is  limited. 
And,  first,  there  is  no  authentic  evidence  that  the  devel- 
opment of  any  organism  has  been  directly  observed  without 
the  demonstrated  or  probable  presence  of  a  germ  derived 
from  a  previous  structure  having  similar  characters.  Even 
the  vexed  question  of  the  origin  of  the  entozoa,  or  internal 
parasites,  has  received  its  approximate  solution  from  modern 
investigations.  The  tape-worm,  for  instance,  is  found  to 
exist  in  two  different  forms  or  stages  of  development.  Each 
perfect  tape-worm  contains  some  twelve  millions  of  eggs, 
capable  of  being  reduced  to  a  floating  dust,  and  thus  being 
deposited  on  various  articles  used  as  food.  The  mouse, 
nibbling  at  everything,  swallows  some  of  these,  and  they 
grow  in  his  body  into  the  state  of  cystic  worms,  an  interme- 
diate form  of  development  only  of  late  recognized  as  being 
a  stage  of  the  tape-worm's  growth.  By  and  by  the  cat  eats 
the  mouse,  and  the  cystic  worm,  finding  its  proper  habitat 
in  this  animal's  alimentary  canal,  assumes  the  true  propor- 
tions of  the  tania  crassicollis.  And  so  another  cystic  worm, 
which  is  common  in  the  flesh  of  oxen,  sheep,  and  especially 
pigs,  becomes,  by  a  similar  metamorphosis,  the  tcema  solium, 
or  long  tape-worm  of  their  human  consumer.  The  tribes 
that  live  on  raw  flesh  are  said  to  be  particularly  subject  to 


468       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

the  tape-worm.  The  hint  derived  from  their  experience 
may  serve  as  an  offset  against  Dr.  Kane's  Arctic  experience, 
and  the  recommendation  of  a  raw  diet  from  nearer  sources. 
So  far  as  our  immediate  object  is  concerned,  we  have  got  rid 
of  one  enigma  in  finding  not  only  the  cradles  but  the 
nurseries  of  these  entozoa.  We  are  obliged  to  consign  the 
supposed  instances  of  equivocal  generation  derived  from 
their  history  to  the  same  category  with  Virgil's  swarm  of 
bees  born  from  a  decaying  carcass. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  the  evidence  of  geology  has 
made  it  plain  that  new  forms  of  life  have  been  called  into 
being  at  many  different  periods  of  the  earth's  history.  The 
multitude  of  distinct  floras  and  faunas  in  different  regions 
and  strata  of  the  earth  sufficiently  proves  that  the  formation 
of  new  organisms  "has  been  as  much  a  part  of  the  regular 
order  of  things  in  creation  as  the  precession  of  the  equi- 
noxes, or  upheavals  and  depressions,  or  any  of  those  changes 
that  work  out  their  great  results  in  the  longer  cycles  of  time. 
No  one  who  observes  the  manner  in  which  new  specific 
forms  are  gradually  introduced  among  those  already  exist- 
ing, can  help  seeing  that  such  new  formations  may  have 
been  quietly  intercalated  in  the  midst  of  their  predecessors 
by  a  series  of  operations  in  which,  as  in  the  mighty  processes 
by  which  new  continents  are  uplifted,  nothing  but  secondary 
agencies  were  apparent.  Chemistry  teaches  us,  as  we  have 
seen,  that  no  new  materials  were  required  to  be  called  into 
being.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  certain  parcels  of  car- 
bon or  of  oxygen  were  created  when  the  first  living  forms, 
containing  these  elements  as  a  matter  of  necessity,  were 
fashioned,  inasmuch  as  they  already  existed  in  immeasurable 
abundance.  What  was  wanted  was  not  the  materials  of  the 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      469 

organism,  or  of  its  germ,  but  the  force  to  bring  them  together 
without  the  intermediate  action  of  a  parent  structure.  The 
creation  of  matter  out  of  nothing  is  perfectly  credible  as 
a  fact,  but  not  definitely  conceivable  by  our  imaginations. 
The  combination  of  preexisting  elements,  and  the  develop- 
ment of  new  properties  in  the  resulting  compound,  is  what 
we  daily  witness. 

If  the  most  insignificant  infusorial  plant  or  animal,  hav- 
ing well-defined  specific  characters,  had  been  evolved  under 
our  own  eyes,  in  circumstances  precluding  the  possible  exist- 
ence of  a  germ  derived  from  a  previous  similar  being,  the 
fact  would  furnish  us  with  a  theory  of  the  organic  creation, 
so  far  as  the  purely  vital,  not  the  spiritual,  side  is  concerned. 
Not  having  any  such  fact  to  appeal  to,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
finding  the  rule  that  whatever  lives  comes  from  a  germ  abso- 
lutely universal,  so  far  as  we  are  acquainted  with  actual  life, 
we  are  reduced  to  barren  speculation  as  to  the  special 
mechanism  employed  in  the  many  changes  of  programme 
which  the  paleontologist  points  out  to  us  in  the  vegetable 
and  animal  world  of  the  past. 

"  The  world  is  in  its  dotage,  and  yet  the  cosmogony,  or 
creation  of  the  world  "  puzzles  us,  as  it  did  the  philosopher 
from  whom  these  words  are  cited.  By  feeling  our  way  up, 
through  what  is  possible,  or  at  least  conceivable,  from  the 
laws  of  the  inorganic  world  to  the  simplest  manifestations 
of  life,  we  may  construct  a  theory  of  the  evolution  of  life  by 
means  of  the  existing  forces  of  nature,  acting  in  different 
degree  or  intensity  from  their  present  ordinary  mode  of 
operation. 

Let  us  construct  such  a  theory,  not  to  lean  upon  it,  but 
to  see  what  degree  of  plausibility  it  may  present,  or  how  its 


47o       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

weakness  may  drive  us  to  another  hypothesis.  We  will  try 
to  make  the  most  of  it,  as  an  advocate  pleads  his  client's 
cause  without  compromising  his  private  opinion.  Suppose 
the  problem  to  be  the  mechanism  of  the  introduction  of 
vegetable  life.  And,  first,  let  us  illustrate  our  possible  rela- 
tions to  this  question  by  an  imaginary  picture  of  a  body  of 
philosophers  of  a  somewhat  ruder  stamp  than  ourselves,  and 
the  statement  of  a  question  which  may  have  occurred  to 
them,  and  taxed  their  highest  faculties. 

A  group  of  savages,  living  in  a  remote  island,  have  from 
time  immemorial  been  in  the  habit  of  employing  fire  for 
warming  themselves  and  in  cooking.  They  never  suffer  it  to 
be  extinguished  everywhere  at  once,  for  they  know  that  they 
can  not  rekindle  it  except  from  another  fire.  They  breed  it 
as  we  breed  trees  in  our  nurseries.  The  fact  of  burning  is 
no  more  a  mystery  to  them  than  any  other  natural  fact ;  its 
phenomena  are  constant,  determinable  beforehand,  and  con- 
trollable, and,  although  they  can  not  talk  about  carbon  and 
oxygen  as  button-using  sages  talk,  they  practically  know  the 
laws  of  combustion.  They  know  that  fire  is  prolific  and 
self-developing ;  that  it  has  its  little  red  seeds,  and  in  due 
time  its  slender  buds  and  broad,  waving  corolla,  like  a  flower ; 
that  it  loves  air  and  hates  water ;  that  it  gives  pleasure  or 
pain,  according  to  the  way  of  using  it;  that  it  renders  the 
flesh  of  the  canine  race  still  more  acceptable  than  their  liv- 
ing presence,  and  even  adds  new  tenderness  to  the  paternal 
relation  in  case  of  premature  bereavement.  All  this  they 
know.  But  if  they  are  asked  where  the  first  fire  came  from, 
or  how  it  was  born,  they  have  no  answer  to  render,  or  only 
an  idle  story  to  tell.  It  was  the  gift  of  the  Great  Spirit,  or 
some  tawny  Prometheus  stole  it  from  heaven.  As  for  any 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      47 x 

mechanism  by  which  it  can  be  produced,  they  are  entirely 
unable  to  suggest  or  conceive  it.  The  wind,  they  know,  fans 
a  spark  into  a  flame,  but  they  laugh  at  the  idea  that  the  wind 
should  kindle  a  fire  without  a  single  spark  to  begin  with. 
At  length  a  great  hurricane  sweeps  over  their  island.  It 
sways  the  tangled  forest-branches  backward  and  forward ;  it 
rends  and  twists  and  grinds  them,  until  the  earth  is  strewed 
with  their  fragments.  Two  dry  boughs  are  swinging  across 
each  other,  and  chafing  in  the  blast.  Presently  a  smoke  rises 
from  their  point  of  crossing,  and  then  a  flame — the  woods 
are  set  on  fire ;  but  the  great  mystery  is  solved,  and  from 
that  time  forward  the  natives  rub  two  sticks  together  when 
they  desire  to  have  the  means  of  warming  their  fingers,  or 
discussing  the  merits  of  such  game  as  they  may  have  bagged 
in  their  last  skirmish. 

We  stand  in  the  same  relation  to  the  origin  of  vegetable 
life  as  that  in  which  the  savages  stood  to  the  origin  of  fire 
before  the  tempest  revealed  it.  Give  us  but  one  little  vege- 
table spark,  and  we  can  in  due  time  kindle  it  by  our  appli- 
ances into  a  flame  of  blossoms  wreathed  in  a  cloud  of  foliage. 
Thrust  into  the  soil  this  little  brown  scale,  one  of  those  which 
the  elm  has  dropped  in  thousands  at  our  feet,  and  it  will  go 
on  towering  and  spreading  until  it  overshadows  the  fourth 
part  of  an  acre.  Take  this  double-winged  germ,  that  looks 
so  like  an  Egyptian  amulet,  and  bury  it.  Out  of  its  core 
will  spring  a  tall  shaft  that  will  wear  its  greenness  for  a  cen- 
tury, though  scarred  with  many  a  wound,  through  which  its 
sweet  juices  have  been  stolen.  This  persistent  force,  build- 
ing up  the  elm  and  the  maple  out  of  such  mere  specks  of 
matter,  holding  steadily  to  the  specific  characters  of  each  in 
every  diversity  of  soil  and  climate,  and  maintaining  them 


47  2       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

through  the  vicissitudes  of  a  hundred  seasons,  is  as  great  a 
mystery  as  would  be  the  production  of  such  a  seed  as  either 
of  those  mentioned  by  deposition  from  the  air  which  con- 
tains their  elements,  or  their  formation  de  novo  from  any  col- 
lection of  their  proximate  principles.  It  is  only  because  we 
are  not  in  the  habit  of  witnessing  the  formation  of  germs  as 
a  daily  occurrence,  that  we  invest  it  with  preternatural  con- 
ditions. Geologists,  who  are  constantly  dealing  with  suc- 
cessive new  creations,  learn  to  accept  the  primitive  evolution 
of  an  organism  as  a  regular  process,  equally  with  its  continu- 
ance. The  lighting  of  a  friction-match  is  not  more  wonder- 
ful than  the  conflagration  of  a  great  city  which  it  kindles. 
If  Schultze  and  Schwann  had  succeeded  instead  of  failed 
in  their  experiments  on  equivocal  generation,  we  should 
have  taken  the  fact  as  quietly  as  the  invention  of  lucifers. 

Let  us  proceed  with  our  theoretical  construction.  We 
have  as  much  right  to  say  that  carbon  has  a  tendency  to 
take  the  form  of  a  plant  under  certain  circumstances,  as 
that  it  has  to  become  a  diamond  under  other  conditions. 
We  do  not  see  it  changing  directly  into  a  plant ;  did  we  ever 
see  it  crystallizing  into  a  diamond  ?  Let  us  now  consider 
the  earth  just  at  the  period  before  the  first  evolution  of 
vegetable  life.  As  uncounted  billions  of  tons  of  carbon 
have  since  been  abstracted  from  the  atmosphere  to  represent 
what  we  may  call  the  fixed  organic  capital  of  our  planet,  as 
well  as  vast  quantities  of  other  elements  derived  from  the 
earth  and  the  waters,  we  may  suppose  the  soil  and  atmos- 
phere to  have  then  represented  a  saturated  solution  of  the 
elements  of  vegetable  organisms.  Some  change  of  condi- 
tion, natural  but  exceptional,  like  the  hurricane  in  our  im- 
aginary picture — an  influx  of  alien  elements  from  some  dis- 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      473 

tant  source,  or  an  alteration  of  temperature,  for  instance — 
destroys  the  equilibrium  of  the  solution.  There  takes  place 
a  vast  precipitate  of  living  crystals — needle-like,  acuminated, 
porous,  crusted  with  an  inorganic  coat  of  silex — the  grass  that 
covers  the  plains  and  hillsides.  The  organic  solution  hav- 
ing been  thus  reduced,  the  next  living  precipitate  may 
probably  be  of  a  different  grade,  more  slowly  formed,  more 
complex,  a  higher  vegetable  growth.  Would  this  process  be 
a  whit  more  incomprehensible  than  the  deposition  of  a  cube 
of  common  salt  from  a  clear  fluid  ?  Now,  although  a  nucleus 
in  the  shape  of 'a  preexisting  cube  of  salt  helps  and  accel- 
erates this  last  process,  it  is  not  always  necessary  to  it.  So 
the  living  shape,  which  commonly  depends  for  development 
on  its  preexisting  nucleus,  or  germ,  may  be  conceived,  under 
certain  conditions,  to  be  formed  without  it,  obeying  the  same 
general  forces,  which  are  confessedly  strong  enough  to  shape 
and  build  up  a  mighty  tree  out  of  a  mere  particle  of  matter, 
or  more  properly  from  the  elements  to  which  this  particle 
has  given  their  first  direction.  After  a  certain  number  of 
vital  precipitations,  we  might  suppose  the  solution,  atmos- 
pheric or  other,  of  the  organizable  substances,  to  retain  just 
so  much  of  these  principles  as  would  be  sufficient  to  keep  up 
the  integrity  of  the  organic  deposits.  The  cube  of  salt  will 
retain  its  form  indefinitely  if  kept  in  the  fluid  from  which  it 
was  deposited.  And  thus  we  see  a  reason  for  the  fact  that 
every  organism  is  immersed  in  a  solution  of  its  own  constitu- 
ents. It  does  not  follow  that  we  must  be  able  to  imitate  this 
natural  process  by  our  artificial  arrangements.  To  say  no- 
thing of  our  very  imperfect  control  of  the  natural  forces,  the 
scale  of  magnitude  of  the  experiment  may  entirely  deter- 
mine the  results.  Spontaneous  combustion  happens  not  un- 


474 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 


frequently  in  heaps  of  vegetable  matter;  but  no  experi- 
menter will  expect  the  same  substances  to  take  fire  in  such 
quantities  as  he  examines  by  the  microscope. 

It  is  only  going  a  step  further  in  our  supposition  to  con- 
ceive the  first  stage  of  vital  precipitation  as  a  simpler  pro- 
cess. We  may  suppose  the  living  precipitate  to  consist  of 
what  we  may  call  indifferent  germs,  that  is,  assimilating  and 
self-developing  centers,  determinable,  but  not  yet  deter- 
mined ;  bearing  the  same  relation  to  vegetable  growths  gen- 
erally which  the  seed  of  an  apple  or  pear  bears  to  the  many 
possible  varieties  that  may  spring  from  it.  This  hypothesis 
is  by  no  means  identical  with  that  of  progressive  develop- 
ment. It  supposes  the  existence  of  permanent  types,  but 
conceives  each  type  to  represent  the  plastic  diagonal  of  two 
forces — a  general  organizing  principle  and  a  local  determin- 
ing one.  The  line  of  direction  once  fixed  persists  indefi- 
nitely, self-perpetuating,  in  the  individual  and  the  species,  a 
vital  movement  parallel  to  its  own  axis.  It  is  not  our  fault 
if  these  indifferent  germs  are  the  same  things  as  the  semina 
rerum  of  the  old  heathen  Lucretius  and  his  masters;  the 
question  is,  whether  they  do  not  assist  our  conception  of  the 
mechanism  of  creation,  and  remove  a  part  of  its  seeming 
difficulty. 

We  might  apply  this  hypothesis  of  indifferent  germs  to 
that  singular  parallelism  without  identity  observed  in  the 
organisms  of  remote  regions.  The  resemblance  between 
many  growths  of  the  Eastern  and  Western  Continents,  for 
instance,  would  follow  as  the  result  of  the  diffusion  of  iden- 
tical germs  amid  similar,  but  not  identical,  general  con- 
ditions of  soil  and  climate.  The  same  series  of  resemblances 
might  be  expected  which  we  see  in  distant  but  correspond- 


THE  MECHANISM  OF   VITAL  ACTIONS.      475 

ing  parts  of  the  body  in  various  affections  of  the  skin.  Both 
arms  or  both  cheeks  often  present  very  nearly  the  same  dis- 
eased aspect,  the  blood  being  the  common  source  of  the 
disturbing  element,  and  certain  corresponding  parts  on  the 
two  sides  of  the  body  furnishing  the  conditions  for  its  de- 
velopment. So  the  two  planetary  limbs  thrust  through  the 
folds  of  the  ocean,  one  on  either  side,  may  be  supposed  to 
throw  out  their  grasses,  or  oaks,  or  elms ;  like  each  other, 
but  not  the  same. 

"  God  has  been  pleased,"  says  Paley,  "  to  prescribe  lim- 
its to  his  own  power,  and  to  work  his  ends  within  these 
limits."  We  can  conceive  of  the  introduction  of  vegetable 
life  without  any  overstepping  of  the  present  self-prescribed 
limits  of  Divine  power,  as  we.  understand  them.  It  is  not 
absurd  to  suppose  that  new  vegetable  types  may  be  forming 
from  time  to  time  in  the  existing  order  of  things.  The  vul- 
gar belief  is  in  favor  of  such  occurrences.  The  extraordi- 
nary fact  of  the  appearance  of  oaks  after  a  pine-growth  has 
been  removed,  and  other  occurrences  of  similar  nature,  have 
never  been  thoroughly  investigated,  so  far  as  we  can  learn. 
Scientific  men  question  curiously  on  the  subject ;  there  is  a 
doubt  in  their  minds  about  the  acorns,  if  they  accept  the 
facts  about  the  oaks,  as  commonly  alleged.  It  is  strange 
that  such  substantial  seeds  should  be  scattered  so  widely. 
It  is  stranger  that  such  perishable  matter  as  they  hold  should 
retain  its  vitality  so  long.  The  experiments  on  equivocal 
generation  have  been  made  too  recently,  and  by  men  of  too 
much  judgment,  to  allow  us  to  treat  the  doctrine  with  con- 
tempt. A  thousand  negative  experiments  can  never  settle 
the  question  definitively.  We  do  not  say  that  it  is  probable, 
but  we  can  not  say  it  is  not  true,  that  new  types  may  be  in- 


476       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

tercalated  every  century  or  every  year  into  the  existing 
flora.  If  the  Dix  pear  was  created  for  the  first  time  in  a 
garden,  in  Washington  Street,  who  shall  say  that  the  same 
power  may  not  have  just  given  us  a  new  fungus  in  some 
corner  of  its  vast  nursery  ? 

Whatever  difficulties  we  find  in  attempting  to  frame  a 
conception  of  the  first  evolution  of  animal  life,  there  are  cer- 
tain facts  which  we  are  authorized  to  take  as  guides  in  our 
reasonings  or  imaginings  upon  the  matter.  Science  con- 
firms the  statement  of  revelation,  that  animal  life  must  have 
come  into  being  after  vegetable  life.  The  plain  reason  is, 
that  plants  are  necessary  to  prepare  the  food  of  animals. 
And  since  no  existing  animal  organism  is  ever  built  up 
directly  from  the  elements,  but  only  out  of  materials  derived 
directly  or  mediately  from  the  vegetable  world,  we  may 
question  whether  those  first  created  were  put  together  di- 
rectly from  the  elements.  The  first  animals  were  necessarily 
placed  where  their  food  was  abundant.  But  their  food  con- 
tained the  elements  of  their  bodies,  and  why  should  not  the 
proximate  principles  contained  in  the  accumulations  of 
vegetable  matter  about  their  birthplace  have  furnished  the 
materials  of  the  first,  as  well  as  of  all  subsequent  organisms  ? 

The  primordial  development  of  the  higher  animals  pre- 
sents this  peculiar  difficulty — that  their  germs  depend  for 
their  evolution  on  their  continued  connection  with  the 
parent.  We  can  conceive  of  an  infusorial  seed  or  ovum  as 
being  formed  by  the  "concourse  of  atoms,"  guided  by  that 
Infinite  Wisdom  which  we  see  every  day  grouping  the  same 
atoms  about  their  living  nuclei.  Reasonable  men  experi- 
ment with  the  hope  of  observing  such  a  fact.  But  no  one 
since  Paracelsus — unless  it  be  the  mother  of  Frankenstein — 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      477 


has  thought  of  getting  up  an  artificial  hormmculus,  or 
or  even  a  lower  mammal,  or  a  bird.  Vaucanson's  duck  was 
perhaps  the  nearest  approach  to  such  a  performance.  He 
could  utter  the  monosyllable  abhorred  of  medical  men,  and 
make  himself  disagreeable  in  more  ways  than  it  is  necessary 
to  mention.  But  he  was  nothing  better  than  wood,  and 
illustrates  the  hopeless  distance  between  the  best  of  our 
paltry  toys  and  the  universe  of  miracles  shut  up  in  any  one 
of  the  more  perfect  animal  organisms.  So  difficult  has  the 
problem  of  the  evolution  of  the  higher  animal  forms  ap- 
peared to  speculative  philosophers,  that  they  have  invented 
the  theory  of  progressive  development  of  the  superior  from 
the  lower  types.  The  sharp  lines  which  separate  species,  as 
shown  by  observation  of  every  organic  fcwm,  extinct  as  well 
as  living,  have  caused  this  famous  and  seductive  hypothesis 
to  be  very  generally  rejected  as  untenable. 

With  all  the  difficulties,  however,  that  stand  in  the  way 
of  our  conceiving  of  the  evolution  of  a  mammal  by  the  aid 
of  the  general  forces  of  nature  acting  on  the  organic  ele- 
ments, we  do  not  see  where  to  draw  the  line  which  shall 
separate  the  higher  from  the  lower  forms  of  life,  and  assign 
a  different  origin  to  the  two  divisions  of  the  series.  Reason- 
ing from  below  upward,  we  should  come  to  this  frank  con- 
clusion, that,  as  definite  form,  limited  duration,  growth  and 
decay,  harmony  of  parts,  transmissible  qualities,  all  implying 
a  controlling  intelligence,  are  manifested  in  the  inorganic 
world,  we  can  not  assume  that  the  same  forces  which  pro- 
duce its  phenomena  may  not  show  themselves  through  all 
forms  of  organized  matter  as  vital  force.  And,  as  the  con- 
ditions of  action  of  these  forces  must  have  varied  at  different 
periods  of  the  earth's  history,  we  can  not  assume  that  they 


478       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

have  always  been  incompetent  to  bring  together  the  elements 
of  organized  matter.  The  various  organic  forms  which  we 
observe  fossilized  in  the  strata  of  the  earth,  without  any 
parent  structures  in  the  subjacent  layers,  may  be  considered 
as  marking  by  their  appearance  the  epoch  of  successive 
"  fits  of  easy  transmission  "  of  the  plastic  elemental  influ- 
ence: 

"  Sed,  quia  finem  aliquam  pariundi  debet  habere, 
Destitit ;  ut  mulier,  spatio  defessa  vetusto." 

And  here  we  leave  this  aspect  of  the  question,  to  look  at  it 
in  another  point  of  view. 

We  recognize  two,  and  only  two,  great  divisions  in  cre- 
ated things.  To  the  first  class  of  his  creatures  the  Deity 
sustains  only  active  relations.  All  their  qualities,  functions, 
adjustments,  harmonies,  are  immediate  expressions  of  his 
wisdom  and  power.  Every  specific  form  is  a  manifestation 
of  the  Supreme  thought.  Every  elemental  movement  is  the 
Sovereign's  self  in  action.  The  only  question  is,  whether  he 
has  at  one  time  been  present  in  our  elements  with  an  organ- 
izing force,  and  afterward  withdrawn  this  particular  mani- 
festation, or  whether  under  the  same  conditions  these  ele- 
ments would  always  manifest  his  ideas  in  the  production  of 
the  same  forms,  just  as  they  now  maintain  the  present  forms 
of  life  by  a  perpetual  miracle,  which  we  fail  to  recognize  as 
such  only  because  it  is  familiar  to  our  daily  experience. 
We  have  stated,  as  well  as  our  space  permitted,  the  argu- 
ment for  the  presence  of  an  organizing  force  in  the  ele- 
ments around  us. 

To  the  second  class  of  his  creatures  the  Creator  stands 
in  passive  as  well  as  active  relations.  They  are  no  longer 
simple  instruments  to  do  his  bidding.  They  may  disobey 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      479 

him,  and  violate  the  harmonies  of  the  universe.  They  have 
the  great  prerogative  of  self-determination,  which,  with 
knowledge  of  the  moral  relations  of  their  acts,  constitutes 
them  responsible  beings. 

Now,  if  our  previous  view  of  matter  and  of  elemental 
force  as  continuous  Divine  manifestations  is  correct,  they 
could  not  in  the  nature  of  things  become  self-determining 
existences.  The  creation  of  independent  centers  of  will  and 
action  involves  a  change  in  the  character  of  the  formative 
agencies  hitherto  at  work  in  the  portion  of  the  universe  with 
which  we  are  acquainted.  And  here  we  come  at  once  upon 
that  mystery  of  mysteries :  How  and  when  are  these  spiritual 
natures  called  into  being,  and  what  is  their  relation  to  the 
material  frames  whose  fundamental  vital  action  we  have 
alone  considered  ?  Have  they  existed  in  some  former  state, 
as  Plato  taught  in  the  Academy,  and  Dr.  Edward  Beecher 
has  maintained  in  the  Church  ?  Are  the  shores  of  embry- 
onic life  crowded  with  souls  waiting  for  their  bodies,  as 
Lucretius  tells  his  readers  was  the  foolish  fable,  and  as 
Brigham  Young  reveals  to  his  congregation  and  announces 
in  his  harem  ?  Or  can  it  be  that  Tennyson  has  solved  the 
difficulty  when  he  tells  us  that— 

"       ...  star  and  system  rolling  past, 

A  soul  shall  draw  from  out  the  vast, 
And  strike  his  being  into  bounds, 

"  And,  moved  through  life  of  lower  phase, 
Result  in  man,  be  born  and  think  "  ? 

Or  does  the  soul  organize  its  own  body,  as  thoughtful  men 
have  held,  from  Aristotle  to  Mr.  Garth  Wilkinson  ? 

Into  these  and  similar  questions  we  can  not  now  enter, 


480       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS. 

if  under  any  circumstances  we  should  be  willing  to  cast  a 
line  into  such  fathomless  abysses  of  speculation.  But  as  we 
have  followed  the  physical  view  of  life  upward  until  we 
have  reached  an  impassable  limit,  it  is  but  fair  to  indicate 
briefly  the  reversed  aspect  of  living  nature,  when  viewed 
from  above  downward,  by  taking,  as  the  point  of  departure, 
its  spiritual  apex,  instead  of  its  material  base. 

The  introduction  of  self-determining  existence,  or  sub- 
creative  centers,  into  the  order  of  things,  marks,  as  we  have 
said,  the  great  change  of  action  by  which  Omnipotence  saw 
fit  to  assume  passive,  as  well  as  active,  relations  to  its  crea- 
tures. There  is  nothing  in  light  or  heat,  or  electricity,  or 
chemical  or  mechanical  force,  that  can  give  any  account  of 
spiritual  existence.  When  the  first  human  soul  was  intro- 
duced to  earthly  being,  if  not  before  the  date  of  this  last 
birth  of  creation,  there  was  a  new  force  put  forth  which  was 
not  any  of  these.  And  so,  whenever  a  new  soul  takes  mor- 
tal shape,  we  recognize  it  as  an  emanation  from  its  Maker 
by  some  other  channel  than  through  the  elemental  sub- 
stances or  influences  that  wait  upon  its  secondary  and  sim- 
ply organic  necessities. 

We  could  not  think  it  strange  that,  at  the  period  of  this 
spiritual  evolution,  a  force  running  parallel  with  it  in  the 
material  world — a  force  not  identical  with  any  of  the  ordi- 
nary physical  agencies — should  combine  the  elements  of  the 
bodily  form,  and  shape  it  to  the  wants  of  the  immaterial 
principle.  We  should  not  therefore  be  constrained  to  throw 
upon  the  common  forces  of  nature  that  wonderful  develop- 
ment from  simple  to  complex,  from  general  to  special,  which 
carries  a  translucent  vesicle  through  a  series  of  evolutions 
and  differentiations,  until  it  wears  the  shape  of  the  august 


THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.      48i 

being  to  whom  the  Deity  has  delegated  a  portion  of  his  om- 
nipotence. But  this  conclusion  would  oblige  us  to  argue 
backward  from  it  to  the  lower  animals,  whose  material  frames 
and  organic  existence  are  essentially  identical  in  their  com- 
position and  mode  of  being  with  our  own.  And,  conceding 
that  a  special  change  of  character  in  the  forces  of  nature 
marks  the  appearance  of  animal  life,  there  would  be  strong 
reason  for  extending  the  same  supposition  to  the  vegetable 
kingdom.  This  is  only  one  instance  of  the  difference  be- 
tween our  conclusions  when  we  look  from  the  higher  sphere 
and  those  which  we  naturally  accept  from  the  workshops  of 
material  philosophy.  We  must  be  content  to  remain  in 
doubt  on  many  details  of  creation  not  revealed  to  us,  on 
which  we  can  only  shape  a  few  half-shadowed  hypotheses. 

In  conclusion,  we  recognize  our  spiritual  natures  as  hav- 
ing only  incidental  and  temporary  relations  with  the  ma- 
terial substance  and  general  forces  of  the  universe.  But  we 
may  concede  that,  the  further  our  examination  extends,  the 
more  completely  the  organic  or  simply  vital  forces  appear  to 
resolve  themselves  into  manifestations  of  those  closely  re- 
lated or  mutually  convertible  principles  which  give  activity 
to  the  unconscious  portion  of  the  universe.  We  have  no 
experimental  evidence  that  these  physical  agencies  can  form 
any  living  germ  by  their  action  upon  matter ;  nor  can  we 
prove  the  contrary.  The  only  directly  observed  conditions 
of  the  evolution  of  a  living  structure  involve  the  presence 
of  a  germ  derived  from  a  being  of  similar  characters.  But 
observation  of  the  earth's  strata  shows  that  new  forms  of 
life  have  appeared  at  numerous  successive  periods  by  some 
other  creative  mechanism.  We  can  frame  hypotheses  not 
inconsistent  with  the  ordinary  laws  of  matter  to  account 
31 


482       THE  MECHANISM  OF    VITAL  ACTIONS.    ' 

for  such  formations,  but  they  can  be  regarded  only  as  more 
or  less  ingenious  speculations.  We  are  obliged  to  recognize 
a  special  intervention  of  creative  power  in  the  introduction 
of  spiritual  existence  in  the  midst  of  the  preexisting  uncbn- 
scious  creation.  If  we' allow  that  higher  modes  of  .action 
have  once  been  superinduced  upon  the  ordinary  physical 
forces,  we  can  not  deny  the  possibility,  and  even  probability, 
of  repeated  changes  in  the  working  machinery  of  creation, 
coinciding  with  the  evolution  of  each  new  type  of  organiza- 
tion. And  if  new  formulae  of  force  in  combination  with 
matter  preceded  the  creation  of  each  organism,  or  group  of 
organisms,  we  can  understand  that  a  special  vital  formula 
may  be  involved  in  the  continuance  of  their  existence.  Thus 
accepting  the  fact  of  a  change  of  law  as  a  possible  part  of 
the  constitution  of  the  universe,  we  arrive,  independently  of 
revelation,  at  the  doctrine  of  miracles,  as  this  term  is  com- 
monly understood.  But  in  the  view  we  have  taken,  what- 
ever part  may  be  assigned  to  the  physical  forces  in  the  pro- 
duction and  phenomena  of  life,  all  being  is  not  the  less  one 
perpetual  miracle,  in  which  the  Infinite  Creator,  acting 
through  what  we  often  call  secondary  causes,  is  himself  the 
moving  principle  of  the  universe  he  first  framed  and  never 
ceases  to  sustain. 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ  • 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


100m-8,'65  (F6282s8)2373 


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